Chief Data Architect

Leverage deep and broad skills as well as understanding of the organization, leading industry practice and group strategy to shape the strategic architecture while providing strong leadership of the Design and Delivery of solutions across a large and diverse area comprised of several portfolios or a full business unit to achieve a large positive impact upon the organization, customers and colleagues (which will be felt well into the future).

• Own and maintain the enterprise data architecture blueprint, applying data fabric and data mesh principles.
• Be accountable for establishing and managing the data product architecture pattern, including defining, certifying, publishing, and overseeing the consumption of data products.
• Act as the design authority for the federated lakehouse architecture, encompassing medallion layers, open table formats, and multi-cloud storage solutions.
• Provide leadership in semantic architecture, driving the adoption of FIBO/BIAN standards, overseeing ontology governance, and shaping the knowledge graph strategy.
• Contribute to Group Strategy and carries the ‘one stop shop’ accountability for the technology roadmap that achieves and enables that Strategy across the business unit.
• Lead the evolution of the overall architecture of their business unit (across business and technical domains).
• Architect and evolve the federated data ownership model — balancing BU autonomy with enterprise coherence.
• Work collaboratively across multiple business units to ensure that their architectures are coherent, stable, scalable, modular and fit for purpose.
• Contribute to, co-evolve and ensure that all associated technology solutions & roadmaps are true to Absa’s architecture principles.
• Deep expertise in data platform architecture, with proficiency in open data standards.
• Set direction, govern decisions, and enable teams for architectural practices.
• Define and design the analytics consumption layer and data marketplace architecture.

• Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Computer and Information Science.
• Experience in data architecture and technology innovation related to business strategy.
• Expertise in data governance and enterprise architecture.
• Strong leadership and collaborative skills.
• Fluency in deployment of agile methodologies.