Lead Data Engineer & Team Lead, Cape Town

Key Recruitment Group; Wes-Kaap; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Key Recruitment Group is partnering with a global faith-based organisation to recruit a Lead Data Engineer in Cape Town. The role focuses on building, maintaining and evolving data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes and cloud architecture, while leading and mentoring the Data & Insights team to enable data-informed decisions across the organisation.

You will collaborate with stakeholders, design scalable data solutions and ensure data quality, security and compliance, while contributing to the team’s

Qualifications

• 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 a related discipline; postgraduate or professional qualifications 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 cloud data platforms (e.g. Azure Data Factory, Databricks, BigQuery, Snowflake), 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) would be an advantage
• Familiarity with CI/CD for data workflows, including containerisation (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

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 the 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, collaborate across time zones, which may involve out-of-hours availability

Skills

SQL

Python

Leadership

Data warehousing

Cloud data platforms

CI/CD for data workflows

Data governance

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in data engineering, data science, data analytics or related discipline

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Databricks

BigQuery

Snowflake

Docker

Git

Job description

Key Recruitment Group is partnering with a global faith-based organisation to recruit a Lead Data Engineer in Cape Town. The role focuses on building, maintaining and evolving data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes and cloud architecture, while leading and mentoring the Data & Insights team to enable data-informed decisions across the organisation.

You will collaborate with stakeholders, design scalable data solutions and ensure data quality, security and compliance, while contributing to the team’s