PRINCIPAL LEAD: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Woolworths Financial Services; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 1 200 000 - 1 600 000; Full time

Job summary

A leading South African brand is seeking a Principal Lead: Business Intelligence in Cape Town. This strategic role requires expertise in designing and evolving enterprise-wide BI capabilities, alongside a hands-on approach to enabling actionable insights. Candidates should possess a degree in Information Systems or related field, with 8-10 years of experience in BI roles, including 3+ years in leadership. Knowledge of tools like Power BI and cloud data platforms is essential. This role champions modern BI principles and influences decision-making across the organization.

Qualifications

• 8-10 years in BI, data analytics, or decision support roles.
• 3+ years in a leadership or principal role.
• Comfortable operating in matrixed environments.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the BI strategy aligned with business priorities.
• Lead design and implementation of high-impact BI solutions.
• Serve as the technical lead for the BI guild.

Skills

Expert-level in BI tools (e.g. Power BI)

Advanced data modelling capabilities

Deep understanding of cloud data warehouses

SQL optimization

Excellent communication skills

Mentoring multidisciplinary teams

Education

Degree in Information Systems or related field

Certified AWS professional

Master’s degree

Tools

Power BI

SQL

Snowflake

Redshift

BigQuery

dbt

Job description

Woolworths Financial Services | Full time

PRINCIPAL LEAD: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Cape Town, South Africa | Posted on 07/24/2025

WoolworthsFinancial Services, or WFS as it is better known, is a JointVenture with Absa Bank, that supports the Woolworths retailbusiness by providing in-storecredit inthe formof the Woolworths StoreCard andoffering value-addedservices including credit cards, personal loans and short-terminsurance as well as life insurance linked to otherproducts.

Job Description

MAIN PURPOSE

The Principal Lead:Business Intelligence (BI) is a strategic and technical leadership role accountable for designing, enabling and evolving the enterprise-wide BI capability. The role combines thoughtleadership, hands-on expertise, and cross-functional influence to ensure that thebusiness consistently derives actionable, timely and trusted insights at scale. The idealcandidate operates at the intersection of data engineering, analytics, and decision enablement,with a bias for impact, simplicity and user-centric design.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership & Capability Development

• Define and evolve the BI strategy inalignment with business priorities, data platform evolution and analyticsmaturity.
• Champion modern BI principles(self-service, semantic layers, data fluency, trust) and embed scalable bestpractices.
• Establish frameworks for KPI governance,data visualization standards, and dashboard effectiveness.
• Lead the design and implementation ofhigh-impact BI solutions using cloud [1] native tools (e.g. PowerBI, AWS QuickSight, dbt etc.) integrated with enterprise data platforms.
• Guide the team in building reusable datamodels, semantic layers and performant dashboards.
• Oversee the full BI development lifecyclerequirement gathering, prototyping, testing, roll-out and user training.

Stakeholder Engagement & Impact Enablement

• Act as the strategic advisor to businessunit leaders, helping translate goals into measurable insight frameworks.
• Partner with Data Engineering, Data Science& Product teams to ensure coherent data consumption pipelines.
• Educate business users and analysts tobuild a data-fluent organization, advocating for responsible use of insight.

People, Process & Practice Leadership

• Serve as the technical and practice leadfor the BI guild, mentoring analysts, engineers and product owners.
• Standardize BI operating procedures andembed a continuous improvement culture within the team.
• Contribute to D&A wide talentdevelopment, including skills frameworks, hiring interviews and onboarding.

Technical Proficiency

• Expert-level in BI tools (e.g. Power BI)with DAX/MDX and advanced data modelling capabilities.
• Deep understanding of cloud data warehouses(e.g. Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery) and SQL optimization.
• Familiarity with modern data stack (e.g.dbt, Git, CI/CD for BI, metadata management, monitoring).

Requirements

QUALIFICATIONS

• Minimum: A degree in Information Systems,Engineering, Business Analytics, or a related field is required.
• Preferred: Certified AWS professional and/ormaster’s degree

EXPERIENCE

• Minimum: A minimum of 8-10 years in BI, dataanalytics or decision support roles, with 3+ years in a leadership or principal role.
• Demonstrated ability to lead by influence, mentormultidisciplinary teams and shape organizational thinking.
• Comfortable operating in matrixed environments witha high degree of ambiguity and strategic flux.
• Excellent communication and presentation skillsPreferred: Exposure to Data M esh, Data ProductManagement and federated insight models is advantageous.
• Experience in financial services, retail or fintechenvironments.

Woolworths Financial Services is a proud South African brand, who iscommitted to transformation. Meeting our employment equity goals will be takeninto account in our recruitment decisions.