Ai Automation Engineer

Ntt Data; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Ntt Data in Johannesburg, South Africa, is building a next‑generation AI Payments Engineering team to design and deliver an AI‑native Payments Operating System. The role focuses on automating high-risk financial operations, with emphasis on auditability, control integrity, and scalable platform solutions.

You will design production-grade AI workflows, deploy agentic processes for reconciliations, audits, and analytics, and collaborate with Payments Backend, Infrastructure, Compliance, and AI CoE

Qualifications

• Proven experience designing AI automation for payments.
• Strong knowledge of governance and risk management in regulated environments.
• Ability to translate business requirements into technical roadmaps.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy production-grade AI automation workflows for payments operations.
• Build dashboards and metrics to measure efficiency, cost, risk, and ROI.
• Collaborate with Payments Backend, Infrastructure, Compliance, and AI COE teams.
• Ensure workflows are production-ready, auditable, and compliant; maintain oversight controls.

Skills

AI governance

Stakeholder engagement

Technical storytelling

Tools

Claude / Anthropic APIs

Java (Spring AI)

Python orchestration

n8n

MCP

Job description

Summary of role

We are building a next-generation AI Payments Engineering Team to design and deliver an AI-native Payments Operating System.

This team will combine AI engineering, payments domain expertise, and production automation to transform high-effort, high-risk financial operations into scalable, intelligent, and auditable systems. The team will focus on automating critical Payments processes such as Least cost routing, reconciliations, audit, Incident automation etc.The mission is to deliver efficiency with control integrity—not just automation speed. This team should have ability to build, test, deploy and maintain (solution and platform) the entire solution.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy production-grade AI automation workflows that drive immediate operational impact.
  

Build and deploy agentic workflows for:

• Reconciliations
• Audit & reporting preparation
• Financial analytics

Use modern AI tooling:

• Claude / Anthropic APIs
• Java (spring AI)/Python orchestration
• n8n (or equivalent workflow engines)
• MCP or similar multi-agent coordination layers

Integrate internal and external systems via:

• APIs
• Data pipelines
• Reporting systems
• Reduce manual effort by identifying automation opportunities across Payments operations
• Maintain human oversight and approval controls where required
• Ensure all workflows are production-ready, auditable, and compliant

AI Governance & Risk Management

• Classify all automation by risk tier before development

Ensure each solution includes:

• Named Process Owner
• Documented data flows
• Access controls
• Full audit logging
• Design automation that preserves control integrity in regulated environments
• Platform & Capability Building
• Develop reusable frameworks, templates, and workflows
• Create documentation and standards to scale adoption

Build dashboards and metrics to measure:

• Efficiency gains
• Cost reduction
• Risk outcomes
• ROI
• Train Payments teams on AI-enabled workflows and tools

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

Work closely with:

• Payments Backend teams
• Infrastructure & platform teams
• Compliance & audit teams
• AI Center of Excellence

Translate business and finance requirements into technical solutions and roadmaps

Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders