Data Engineering Manager

Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Data Engineering Manager to join our team.

We are a young, dynamic, hyper growth company looking for smart, creative, hard-working people with integrity to join us! 

Think you’ve been challenged before? Think again!

• Scale: 4 million happy shoppers shop online on takealot.com. Show them what you can do.
• Learn: We work with the best of the best, and then some. Code alongside industry leaders and upskill in record time. 
• Grow: Expand your career in the fast-growing Takealot Group: takealot.com and Mr D. We like to promote from within: Here’s your chance. 

Who’s who in the tech space

This position reports to the Data Platform Engineering Manager.

As a Data Engineering Manager, you will lead the team in acquiring, integrating, and transforming data from various sources to ensure it is accurate, reliable, and readily available. You will design and optimize ELT processes, develop scalable data models, and enforce data governance policies. Applying software engineering best practices like version control and CI/CD, you will automate testing and monitoring of data pipelines. Additionally, you will collaborate with data analysts, scientists, and business users to understand their data needs, maintain comprehensive documentation, and communicate solutions effectively. Staying abreast of industry trends, you will drive innovation, manage project timelines, and mentor your team to foster a culture of continuous learning and excellence.

We are currently building a Real-Time Event-Driven Architecture for data processing and data warehousing using open-source and server-less technologies such as Debezium, BigQuery, DataForm, Kafka, among others. This new Lakehouse will serve as the central source of truth, which multiple internal users will have access to, to drive their daily/monthly/quarterly decisions. 

Takealot is growing rapidly, which brings a number of unique and interesting challenges. As such, data within the organization is also growing quickly. This brings a lot of opportunities for you to shape the tools, technologies, and culture around data in the company.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• Lead, execute and maintain the Data Engineering strategy that will fit into our Group Data Strategy
• Architecting and implementing technical solutions to support scale and security initiatives
• Mentoring and coaching of data best practices within the organization. Driving the adoption of these best practices to ensure data hygiene.
• Defines standards and frameworks with regards to best practices in the Data Engineering and Software Engineering realm.
• Define and implement standard development methodologies to ensure that the team is using best practices for coding, efficiency, version control, QA and release management.
• Oversee operational support
• Participates in the project management estimation process.
• Manage backlogs and expectations with stakeholders.
• Identifies and provides input to new technology opportunities that will have an impact on the enterprise wide Business Intelligence systems.
• Ensure team projects adhere to deadlines, and budgets.
• Implementing features, technology, and processes that move us towards industry best practices, improving on scalability, efficiency, reliability, and security.
• Designing, developing, testing, and maintaining data architectures.
• Automating repetitive tasks and manual processes related with the data usage
• Optimizing data delivery.
• Participate in the recruitment process, eventual mentorship and career path of employees.
• Responsible for the full life-cycle development, implementation, production support, and performance tuning of Data Engineering team
• Analyses business and functional requirements and translates these requirements into robust, scalable, operable solutions.
• Ensuring that the data pipelines and general support infrastructure continue to run and operate in the most efficient manner.
• Provide operational support, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.
• Data validation and integrity testing.
• Data cleansing
• Optimisation of Data Models.
• Automation of Data Model Generation and Data Quality Checks
• Maintain Data Dictionary
• Data Provenance and lineage tactics and implementation thereof
• Leveraging best practices in continuous integration and delivery.
• Collaborating with other engineers, ML experts, BI Engineers, Analytical Engineers, and stakeholders to produce the most efficient and valuable solutions.
• Contributing to our data democratization and literacy vision by making accessible and easy-to-use data products and tools.
• Implementing features, technology, and processes that move us towards industry best practices, improving on scalability, efficiency, reliability, and security.
• Responding to Incidents.

The skills we need:

• Works well with people, and is passionate about helping people be their best
• Is a team player, an active listener, mentor, and able to communicate well
• Shows solid reasoning and decision making, with the ability to work under pressure
• Is passionate about technology, systems and data
• Is curious, always learning, and keeping up to date with the industry
• Solutions-oriented, can-do attitude and high energy
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Proven track record of delivering high-quality work, in a fast-paced environment
• Focus on getting the job done, but have fun doing so
• Taking ownership and displaying accountability in the work required of you
• Have an interest in e-commerce, building a brand and business
• Customer-centric

Qualifications & Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree or Advanced Diploma in Information Systems, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering and a minimum of 5 years of relevant Data Engineering experience in a software/technology environment is required.
• In the event that a candidate does not have a Bachelor’s Degree or an Advanced Diploma (in Information Systems, Computer Science, Mathematics, or Engineering), an equivalent experience requirement must be met, which equates to a minimum of 8 years of relevant Data Engineering experience in a software/technology environment. 
• Experience leading a team technically, with a focus on a very high quality output is required
• Experience mentoring, coaching, and developing others technically
• Experience working within an Agile team, and an advocate of that culture
• Significant technical experience and a proven track record of data modeling and schema design
• A thorough understanding of database and data warehousing principles (e.g. OLAP, Data Marts, Star Schema, Snowflake, etc.)
• Write code (we use Java and Python)
• A thorough understanding of computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented design, data structures and algorithms
• A solid understanding of Linux and operating systems, networking
• Experience using Looker, BigQuery and Dataform is advantageous
• Minimum 5 years SQL experience
• Have experience with Build Systems (Jenkins, Gitlab, Spinnaker)
• Have experience with Google Cloud, or another cloud provider (architecture, operations)
• High proficiency in working with large data sets and business models
• Experience with Domain Driven Design (DDD) is advantageous
• Retail or e-commerce industry experience beneficial

Let’s talk about life @ Takealot Group

• The power is in your hands: We offer a market-related, Total Remuneration Package which allows full flexibility according to your needs. Go on, be the master of your own destiny.
• No doors: We aren’t fans of stuffy offices or siloed work environments. See someone you like? High five, collab and make something great.
• Remote working: Love water cooler chats and working from home? Takealot.com offers a hybrid working model for the best of both worlds.
• Mentorship programme: We aren’t kidding when we say the people with the best people win. Now’s your chance to be one of the best, by learning from the best.
• Naspers Tech Community & Online Learning: Share ideas and grow with global industry leaders who are all just a Slack message away. Love to learn? Up-skill with free access to courses on MyAcademy, Udacity, Coursera and more.
• Good times: Get to know the other extraordinary minds at takealot.com during regular social events and out-of-office activities (think hikes, think mini golf, think good times).
• Staff discount. Millions of products across 28 departments. What more could you ask for?
• Birthday leave: Cake Day all the way. Enjoy your day off - you deserve it. 
• Right tools, right job: Mac or Windows, two monitors or one. Whatever your preference, you’ll work on the latest tech, off the latest tech.
• Help when you need it most: Confidential counseling, legal support and financial guidance, for free, anytime, anywhere. 
• Tech stack (for days): ReactJS, Python, Scala, Kotlin, Swift, Google Cloud, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes and all things machine learning. If you build it, they will come.
• Free parking: No more 5km fun runs to your desk (unless you want to). 

Like what you see? 

If you meet the above you are an Extraordinary Mind. Apply today!!

Takealot is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities will be given preference.