Senior Data Engineer - Group Data & ML Platform Tribe

Job Description

As a Senior Data Engineer in the Group Data & ML Platform Tribe in Bellville, you will design and build cutting-edge data platforms to empower Sanlam’s data-driven initiatives. Your work will focus on creating scalable, secure, and efficient data ingestion, transformation, and machine learning solutions. By leveraging cloud technologies, containerization, and infrastructure-as-code practices, you will enable analysts and data scientists to deliver impactful insights and models. This role offers the chance to lead technical innovation, coach team members, and contribute to Sanlam’s mission of transforming financial services across Africa.

Requirements

• Matric.
• National Diploma in an Information Technology related discipline or a bachelor's degree in computer science, Statistics, Informatics, Information Systems, or a quantitative field will be recommended.
• 5+ years' experience as a data engineer in data platform or service engineering team with at least 2 in a modern context with cloud technologies.
• Track record of high impact and investing in your own development.
• Ability to act independently and to deal with high levels of ambiguity.

Responsibilities

• Build configurable data ingestion platforms to collect and protect data from any source within two weeks or less, optimized for cost efficiency, with reliability as a non-negotiable standard.
• Develop solutions that allow SQL-only users to easily schedule and orchestrate complex data transformation processes, such as through Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs).
• Build systems that empower analysts and data scientists to produce insights and ML models needed to drive customer and commercial success with minimal engineering skills and platform friction.
• Engineer the platform for observability and performance, facilitating real-time tracking of the system’s internal state through logs, metrics, and traces.
• Define clear and measurable Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and integrate these into team OKRs to drive excellence.
• Engineer the platform with privacy and security by design, implementing Data Governance and Privacy policies effectively, leveraging encryption, firewalls, VPCs, Role Based Access Control and IAM integrations such as Active Directory.
• Implement containerization strategies and infrastructure as code (IaC) practices to ensure scalable, repeatable, and efficient deployment of data services, utilizing tools like Docker and Terraform.
• Engage in technology spikes to clarify needs and articulate solution criteria, evaluate different options through hands-on experimentation, leading to documented evaluations and recommendations.
• Execute on a culture of excellence and continuous improvement for both your part of the platform and your own abilities, participating in pre and post-mortems, sharing lessons learned.
• Enable a culture of continuous learning and assist other engineers in their development journey.