Africa Assurance Innovation Leader

Overview

EY’s Africa Assurance Innovation and Digital business is a core service within our Africa Assurance practice, focused on driving digital enablement and adoption to enhance our service offerings through various capabilities, including analytical solutions. Join our groundbreaking center of excellence that is transforming how assurance teams engage with clients through meaningful analysis and insights generated by our digital initiatives and solutions. The Innovation team has developed digital solutions to automate, centralise and enhance audit​​​​ procedures and processes that are manual, administrative and repetitive in nature, thus enabling audit teams to focus their time on areas requiring professional judgement and insight.

The Opportunity

We are seeking a dynamic candidate for the role of Africa Assurance Innovation Leader. In this position, your innovation skills, data strategy expertise, business development acumen, engagement management capabilities, and problem-solving abilities will be instrumental in guiding our clients through the complexities of digital transformation, modern data science, and analytics.

Key Responsibilities

• Business Development & Growth: Drive the development, growth, and management of the Innovation business within the broader Assurance Innovation and Digital landscape, aligning with relevant business targets and ensuring achievement.
• Engagement Management: Establish and monitor processes that enable teams to plan, scope, design, deliver, and quality review client engagements utilizing data analytics, complementing other service offerings such as Sustainability, Forensics, and Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS).
• Team Empowerment: Act as a subject matter resource (SMR) to support engagement delivery teams in overcoming challenges by leveraging personal experience and connecting networks.
• Financial Oversight: Manage the financial health of the business, continuously monitoring for potential financial risks.
• Collaboration: Foster collaboration across the specialists’ network within the Africa Assurance Innovation and Digital business, including Data Delivery, Custom Analytics, Process Mining, and Go-to-Market strategies to drive digital transformation.
• Team Well-being: Prioritize the well-being of your teams, assisting them in achieving their career ambitions and learning goals.
• Community Building: Drive collaboration across specific Africa regions and build a community of practice.
• Expertise in Data Value Chain: Understand how engagement objectives relate to various phases of the data value chain and utilize advanced technology and analytics to address analytical problem statements.
• Proactive Learning: Actively seek out learning opportunities to contribute to the advancement of the Assurance Innovation and Digital business.

Qualifications and Experience Requirements:

Educational Background:

Preferred degree in Mathematics, Engineering, Economics, Computer Science, Information Management, Statistics, or a related field.

Professional Experience:

• 10+ years of relevant experience in a professional services or consulting environment.
• 10+ years of experience in designing and delivering analytics solutions for audit and forensic clients using a broad range of analytical toolsets (e.g., PowerApps, SQL, Python, R, PowerBI).
• 7-10 years of experience in managing people and budgeting within a business area.

Skills and Competencies:

• Customer-centric solution mindset with strong analytical and logical thinking skills.
• Strong understanding of modern data science methodologies and analytics development.
• Experience in applying Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to solve business problems.
• Experience in design thinking and agile approaches to project management and solution delivery.
• Understanding of business processes and the ability to design analytical solutions that address specific business challenges.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with fluency in English.
• Proficient presentation and storytelling abilities.
• Ability to prioritize competing responsibilities and demonstrate lateral thinking.
• Strong attention to detail and a proactive attitude towards service delivery.
• Independent, self-motivated, and passionate about delivering quality and innovative products.
• Understanding of information communication technology (ICT) in enabling businesses and financial statement production.
• Familiarity with different database types (relational databases/NoSQL) and the ability to analyze relationships between data.

Preferred Qualifications:

Accreditations in Innovation and Business Strategy.