Senior Data Engineer (Lead), Pretoria

An exciting opportunity exists for a highly skilled Senior Data Engineer / Data Lead to join a leading client in the financial services sector on an 18-month fixed-term contract. This role is ideal for a data professional who can combine strong technical engineering capability with leadership, stakeholder engagement, and data management expertise.The successful candidate will play a critical role in driving the improvement of data management maturity across the organisation, while providing the technical support required to enable reliable, secure, and effective decision-making. This role will support the appropriate use, protection, integration, and governance of data, ensuring that data assets are trusted, accessible, well-managed, and aligned to business needs.The Data Lead will also be responsible for leading the Data Migration Workstream, working closely with business stakeholders, implementation partners, and technical teams to deliver high‑quality data migration, integration, and data engineering outcomes. This role is suited to a hands-on senior data professional who can lead from both a technical and delivery perspective. The ideal candidate will be comfortable working in a complex, regulated environment and will have the ability to translate business data requirements into practical engineering solutions. They should be proactive, detail‑oriented, collaborative, and confident engaging with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders. Strong leadership, governance awareness, and a passion for improving data maturitywill be key to success in this role.Requirements

A minimum of a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Information Management or equivalent A minimum of five to eight years' experience in a Data Management environment Key Performance Measures

Develop, construct, test, and maintain data pipeline architectures that are reliable, scalable, secure, and aligned to business needs. Design and maintain integration patterns, including APIs, data exchange formats, interoperability standards, and integration protocols. Build data pipelines that are robust, modular, scalable, reproducible, deployable, and version controlled across relevant data and business domains.Quality assure data pipeline implementations to ensure alignment with approved data engineering frameworks, standards, and best practices. Monitor and optimise domain‑specific data pipelines to ensure reliable data availability, performance, and sustainability over time. Recommend practical and innovative ways to improve data quality, reliability, performance, automation, and operational efficiency.Support the technical implementation of key data management capabilities, including:

Data quality management Metadata management Master and reference data management Data architecture and data modelling Data security and privacy Data lifecycle and retention management Data cataloguing and data lineage Analytics enablement

Maintain clear and accurate documentation for data pipelines, integration processes, migration activities, technical designs, and interoperability requirements. Manage and analyse data growth patterns to support infrastructure planning, responsible data sharing, and compliance with data retention frameworks.Engage stakeholders across the organisation to promote effective data management and support appropriate, responsible, and value‑driven data usage. Provide input into data governance forums, technical review sessions, migration planning sessions, and delivery reporting structures. Ensure that data engineering and migration activities support reliable decision-making, regulatory alignment, operational efficiency, and long‑term data maturity.

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