Data Principal Engineer
takealot.com19 days ago
Cape Town, South AfricaStaff+
Responsibilities
- Create and maintain a master blueprint of the Group’s data architecture, sources, flows, models, and KPI mappings while leading ecosystem simplification and technical debt reduction.
- Design and build an event-driven real-time data layer for logistics, supply chain, distribution centre, and operational analytics use cases.
- Establish and own technical standards for data quality, lineage, documentation, data management, contracts, security, privacy, and governance.
- Build and maintain a central architecture repository covering data flows across hundreds of systems and 15–20+ business units.
- Define platform guardrails and integration patterns for AI tools, copilots, agents, RAG systems, and safe data consumption.
- Design automation for governance and platform operations, including maturity telemetry, self-service onboarding, dashboards, scripts, and AI-assisted copilots.
- Create structured onboarding paths, architecture guides, specialist training, and governance learning content.
- Act as the highest technical authority in the data domain, resolve complex cross-functional design challenges, advise the Engineering Director, and mentor senior and staff engineers.
Requirements
- A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field is preferred; equivalent demonstrated experience at the required scale and seniority may substitute for formal qualifications.
- At least 8 years of data engineering experience, including at least 3 years at principal or architect level in a complex, high-scale environment.
- Track record designing and delivering large-scale lakehouse or warehouse platforms, real-time event streaming, and data ingestion frameworks.
- Experience leading platform simplification or technical debt reduction and contributing technical standards to a formal data governance programme; DMBOK familiarity is a plus.
- Hands-on experience with AI or ML data infrastructure, including feature stores, model-serving pipelines, data contracts, and drift monitoring.
- Experience integrating AI or LLM tooling such as copilots, agents, or RAG with data platforms, semantic layers, access patterns, and data contracts.
- Experience building automation, internal tooling, dashboards, scripts, or copilots that reduce manual operational work.
- Deep GCP expertise, particularly BigQuery and Dataform, plus experience with Kafka, Pub/Sub, or equivalent stream-processing frameworks.
- Strong command of dimensional and event-driven data modelling and working knowledge of Looker or LookML.
- Experience with Terraform or equivalent Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD for data pipelines.
- Strong Python and SQL skills, with familiarity with dbt-style transformation frameworks and orchestration tools.
- Understanding of POPIA obligations, auditability, data lineage, compliance requirements, architecture documentation, and build-versus-buy trade-offs.
- Experience advising senior stakeholders, translating technical trade-offs into business terms, standardising technology choices, and mentoring engineers.
- Exposure to logistics, e-commerce, or supply chain data is a plus.
Benefits
- Market-related total remuneration package with flexibility according to individual needs.
- Hybrid working model based in Cape Town.
- Mentorship programme and access to the Naspers Tech Community.
- Free access to MyAcademy, Udacity, Coursera, and other online learning resources.
- Regular social and out-of-office activities.
- Staff discount across Takealot’s product categories.
- Birthday leave.
- Confidential counselling, legal support, and financial guidance.
- Free parking.
Tech Stack
Apache KafkadbtGoogle BigQueryGoogle CloudGoogle Cloud PlatformKotlinKubernetesPythonReactRedisScalaSQLSwiftTerraform
Categories
Data Engineering