Remote Real-Time Data Principal Engineer

takealot.com; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working model

Staff discount

Birthday leave

Mentorship program

Learning & development access

Job summary

Takealot Group is seeking a Data Principal Engineer in Cape Town to define and drive the group’s data architecture, governance, and real-time data enablement. You will set standards and build a scalable data platform supporting logistics, DC analytics, and data monetisation products.

You will lead architecture governance, mentor senior engineers, and partner with DataOps and BI teams to deliver an automation-first data platform strategy with executive sponsorship.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field preferred.
• 8+ years in data engineering, with at least 3 years at principal/architect level.
• Experience designing large-scale data platforms (lakehouse/warehouse, real-time streaming).
• Experience contributing technical standards into data governance programmes.

Responsibilities

• Produce a master blueprint of data architecture and standardise tech choices across teams.
• Design and build the real-time data layer for faster operational analytics.
• Define and own data governance standards, quality, lineage, and documentation.
• Lead AI tool integration planning and governance patterns across the platform.

Skills

GCP BigQuery

Kafka

Python

SQL

Data modelling

Data governance

Looker LookML

Dataform

Terraform

CI/CD

POPIA

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering/IS or related

Tools

Dataform

Terraform

dbt/Looker deployments

Job description

Takealot Group is seeking a Data Principal Engineer in Cape Town to define and drive the group’s data architecture, governance, and real-time data enablement. You will set standards and build a scalable data platform supporting logistics, DC analytics, and data monetisation products.

You will lead architecture governance, mentor senior engineers, and partner with DataOps and BI teams to deliver an automation-first data platform strategy with executive sponsorship.