Lead Data Engineer

Cvglobal; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,350,000; Full time

Job summary

CV (Christian Vision) in Cape Town is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to build and evolve data pipelines, ensuring clean, trustworthy data for analytics across CV functions. You will lead a data and insights team, mentor engineers, design cloud-based architectures, and collaborate across borders to deliver scalable data products.

The role requires strong leadership, SQL/Python, and experience with modern cloud platforms and data warehousing.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in data engineering with pipeline design and ETL development.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field; postgraduate qualifications are a plus.
• Strong SQL and Python; experience with cloud data platforms and data warehousing.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with stakeholders to define project requirements and translate into technical plans.
• Lead, mentor data engineers through team meetings and reviews.
• Plan and manage project execution with defined tickets and resources.
• Design and monitor automated data ingestion pipelines across sources.
• Build and optimize ETL/ELT processes for reporting and analytics.
• Define metrics and data outputs with cross-functional teams.
• Contribute to CV's cloud data architecture and data storage best practices.
• Ensure data platform security, scalability, and regulatory compliance.
• Document pipelines, schemas, and workflows.
• Coach onboarding and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Collaborate to ensure secure data delivery for decision-making.
• As part of a global organisation, may involve out-of-hours availability.

Skills

5+ years experience

SQL

Python

Leadership

ETL/ELT design

Data warehousing

Cloud data platforms

CI/CD for data

Docker

Git

LangChain

Education

Bachelor's degree in data engineering / related field

Postgraduate qualifications advantageous

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Databricks

BigQuery

Snowflake

Docker

Git

LangChain

Job description

CV (Christian Vision) is a global organisation that exists to introduce people to Jesus and encourage them to become his true followers. Evangelism is at the heart of all we do at CV, bringing the gospel to people around the world in both physical and digital realms.

If you are passionate about sharing the gospel and motivated by a desire to create meaningful change at scale, CV offers a unique mission-driven opportunity to join a team harnessing innovation and navigating new frontiers within evangelism.

Job Overview

We are seeking a skilled, creative, and strategic Lead Data Engineer who shares our passion for evangelism and wants to join our dynamic team in Cape Town, South Africa. This role is responsible for building, maintaining, and evolving the data pipelines, transformation workflows, and infrastructure, as well as leading and mentoring the data engineers in the Data and Insights team in order to unlock insight, scale innovation, and inform impact. This role requires both technical expertise and strong leadership skills to guide the team in ensuring that data is clean, structured, trustworthy, and ready for analysis, enabling data-informed decisions across all CV functions and initiatives.

Specific Responsibilities

• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather project requirements, define scope and priorities, and translate them into actionable technical plans.
• Lead, mentor, and support data engineers through regular team meetings, sprint and project reviews, fostering innovation, collaboration, and professional growth.
• Plan and manage project execution, maintaining ticketing systems and ensuring tasks are well-defined, prioritised, and resourced to meet objectives efficiently.
• Design, implement, and monitor automated data ingestion pipelines across diverse sources, ensuring quality, consistency, compliance, efficiency and reliability.
• Build and optimise ETL/ELT processes to prepare data for reporting, dashboards, and analytics, translating business logic into reusable transformation code and models.
• Collaborate with analysts and partners in mission initiatives and other cross-functional teams to define key metrics and data outputs that provide organisational value.
• Contribute to the design and continuous evolution of CV’s cloud-based data architecture, defining best practices for data storage, performance, and access control.
• Work closely with Infrastructure and Cybersecurity teams to ensure data platform security, scalability, and compliance with organisational and regulatory standards.
• Develop and maintain documentation for pipelines, schema designs, workflows, and project specifications, ensuring consistency with shared engineering standards and templates.
• Provide leadership in onboarding, cross-training, and knowledge sharing within the team to sustain operational excellence and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with the Applications, Governance and Cybersecurity teams and partners in Mission teams to ensure secure integrations and high-quality data delivery to support data-informed decision-making.
• As part of a global organisation, you will be required to collaborate across time zones, which may involve out-of-hours availability.

General Responsibilities

Fulfil all duties outlined above for this specific role, and as directed below for all team members within CV. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Actively pursue personal, professional, and spiritual growth.
• Contribute positively to our team culture by upholding CV’s values in attitude and action.
• Comply with all CV policies, procedures, and regulatory requirements.
• Maintain confidentiality and demonstrate integrity in all matters.
• Engage fully in staff and team meetings, collaboration, and communication.
• Commit to continuous learning and development as needed for the role.
• Foster respectful, clear, and constructive communication across all interactions.
• A practising Christian in full agreement with the CV Statement of Faith.
• Actively involved in a local church or Christian faith community.
• Committed to living according to biblical values.

Skills, Experience and Education

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, including pipeline design and ETL development, with leadership experience preferred.
• Bachelor's degree in data engineering, data science, data analytics or related discipline. Postgraduate or professional qualifications would be an advantage.
• degree would be an advantage.
• Strong SQL skills and familiarity with Python or other scripting languages, including capability to develop and work with agentic AI.
• Experience with any cloud data platforms (e.g., Azure Data Factory, Databricks, BigQuery, Snowflake, etc.), with the ability to guide architectural decisions.
• Expertise in data warehousing concepts, dimensional modelling, and workflow orchestration.
• Understanding of agentic systems and multi-agent orchestration concepts (e.g., MCP, A2A protocols, LangChain-style architectures) to support AI-driven data products and workflows would be an advantage.
• Familiarity with CI/CD for data workflows, including containerization (Docker), version control (Git), and infrastructure-as-code.
• A continuous learning mindset and familiarity with the latest AI/ML trends, including how LLMs are being integrated into data tooling.
• Commitment to data privacy, quality, and stewardship, with the ability to lead by example.
• High-level written and oral communication skills, and the ability to interact professionally cross-functionally and cross-culturally across all levels of the organisation.
• Experience in collaborative team working, contributing to and encouraging a culture of service delivery of the highest quality.
• Ability to think and act creatively, and adaptably to problem solve.
• Ability to successfully engage in multiple initiatives simultaneously.