(907) Data Scientist - FinStab

Job title: Data Scientist  

Location: Head Office, Pretoria

Organisation name: Data Management and Analytics Division

Department description: Financial Stability Department 

 

Brief description

The main purpose of this position is to leverage industry knowledge and analytical expertise to lead the analysis of data in support of policy and decision-making with respect to the departmental strategic mandate.

Detailed description

The successful candidate will be responsible for the following key performance areas:

• Identify value driving opportunities for the application of advanced analytics in achieving the departmental mandate.
• Execute advanced analytics use cases to derive insights across key departmental subject areas.
• Identify, source and assess relevant structured and unstructured data for statistical modelling.
• Prepare data for statistical modelling by identifying data correlations and collinearity and performing required feature engineering.
• Develop robust statistical models that are modular, scalable, deployable, reproducible and versioned for analytics and reporting purposes and ensure that models are validated and meet required performance thresholds.
• Fully document analytics use cases according to best practice standards (including documenting model selection, validation, algorithms and code).
• Monitor, measure and report on analytical results to ensure appropriate business recommendations and insights. The analytical results may require the decision requirements model to be updated.
• Deploy, maintain, enhance, optimise and automate analytics solutions.
• Identify and mitigate risks (i.e. model biases) and ensure adherence to ethics principles (fairness, privacy, transparency and accountability) with regard to data and advanced analytics modelling.
• Align work outputs to relevant departmental and South African Reserve Bank strategies, and enterprise information management and governance standards and frameworks.
• Communicate complex analytics concepts in a clear and concise manner to assist researchers and stakeholders in interpreting model outputs and informing decisions and policy actions.
• Collaborate and proactively engage stakeholders from business and functional support areas across the analytics life cycle to ensure solutions are well formulated, deployed, supported and adopted.
• Keep abreast of industry best practices, techniques and technologies and lead the implementation thereof to ensure value-enhancing advanced analytics solutions.

 

Job requirements

To be considered for this position, candidates must be in possession of:

• a Bachelor’s degree (NQF 7) in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) field or an equivalent qualification;
• data science certification;
• data analytics or visualisation certification; 
• six to eight years’ experience in building, maintaining and optimising data and business intelligence solutions;
  • at least three to five years’ experience in building advanced analytics solutions as part of the analytics setup in a company/analytics service provider; and
  • a minimum of two years’ experience in deploying, maintaining and optimising advanced analytics solutions.
    • an advanced degree.

The following would be an added advantage:

Additional requirements include:

• technical expertise in at least two of the following programming languages: Python, R, SAS, Scala and SQL;
• technical expertise in statistics and machine learning (ML) – regressions, clustering and time series techniques, bagging and boosting trees, ensemble models and neural networks;
• working experience in:
• descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis (EDA);
• large datasets in flat files, relational databases and distributed systems (Hadoop), with some exposure to AWS, Azure and/or GCP desirable;
• visualisation tools (e.g. PowerBI, SAS, Tableau and MicroStrategy);
• leveraging a large volume of structured and unstructured data to build artificial intelligence (AI)/ML solutions through end-to-end automated data pipelines;
• MLOps for AI/ML model deployment monitoring/enhancements for standalone solutions or as part of larger products;
• the ability to communicate complex ideas effectively, both verbally and in writing; and
• experience in working and collaborating with a variety of stakeholders throughout a data science project’s life cycle.

 

Additional details

Career path: Functional Contributor (FC) 

Level: FC3 – Pro

Enquiries relating to this position may be directed to Ms Shavani Naidoo at Shavani.Naidoo@resbank.co.za.

About SARB

 

Primary mandate of the SARB

 

Section 224 of the Constitution of South Africa states the mandate of the SARB as follows:

The primary object of the South African Reserve Bank is to protect the value of the currency in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in the Republic.

The South African Reserve Bank, in support of its primary objective, must perform its functions independently and without fear, favour or prejudice.

 

WHAT WE DO

 

Monetary Policy

 

The Constitution gives the SARB the mandate to protect the value of the rand. We use interest rates to keep inflation low and steady.

 

Financial Stability

 

The SARB has a mandate to protect and enhance financial stability. We identify and mitigate systemic risks that might disrupt the financial system.

 

Prudential Regulation

 

The Prudential Authority regulates financial institutions and market infrastructures to promote and enhance their safety and soundness, and support financial stability.

 

Financial Markets

 

Open market operations are the main tool we use to implement monetary policy. We manage South Africa’s gold and foreign exchange reserves.

 

Financial Surveillance

 

The SARB is responsible for regulating cross-border transactions, preventing the abuse of the financial system and supporting the regulation of financial institutions.

 

Payments and Settlements

 

The SARB is responsible for ensuring the safety and soundness of the national payment system, which is the backbone of South Africa’s modern financial system.

 

Statistics

 

The SARB provides important economic and financial statistics that present an overview of the economic situation in South Africa.

 

Research

 

Research conducted by the SARB focuses on economics, financial stability, banking and emerging trends in finance. Our research supports policy decision-making.

Banknotes and Coin

 

The SARB has the sole right to make, issue and destroy banknotes and coin in South Africa.