Senior AI & Data Strategy Architect (Enterprise)

Placements24; South Africa; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

NTT DATA in South Africa seeks a Senior Data Architect to act as a strategic technical advisor across Sales, Clients, and Delivery, shaping data and AI go-to-market strategies and enterprise architectures. You will drive conversations on data strategy, governance, and cloud platforms with executives across industries.

The role covers advisory, opportunity shaping, and development of industry propositions for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Mining, and Healthcare, with a strong emphasis on

Qualifications

• 10+ years in enterprise architecture, consulting, solution strategy or technical pre-sales.
• 8+ years operating in an applications landscape with D&A tech solutions (MDM, Data Quality, Data Governance, Data Engineering and Data Cloud platforms).
• Strong understanding of enterprise applications, software engineering and modern digital platforms.
• Solid understanding of data platforms, analytics tools, and AI/ML solution offerings.
• Demonstrated experience developing enterprise data strategies, AI adoption roadmaps and information governance models.
• Working knowledge of ontology-based information modelling, knowledge graphs, metadata management and semantic architectures.
• Strong understanding of Microsoft Data & AI, AWS Data & AI, Snowflake and other technology ecosystems.
• Ability to develop industry reference architectures for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Mining or Healthcare advisable.
• Strong commercial acumen, proposal development and executive presentation capability.
• Ability to interrogate delivery models, estimates and commercial risk.

Responsibilities

• Act as a strategic advisor to Sales and Client Managers, leading executive-level discovery and value-led conversations.
• Facilitate Client discussions aimed at understanding business requirements related to their data and applications estate - including business strategy, operating models, data maturity, AI readiness, governance and overall technology direction.
• Help shape and inform client deals and develop client opportunities alongside our Sales team.
• Define target-state architectures conceptually, capability roadmaps and investment priorities.
• Help inform and build commercial models to support client opportunities.
• Validate architecture, security, integration, data governance, AI governance and delivery approaches with client and internal specialists.
• Review solution estimates, delivery assumptions, commercial models and execution risks.
• Translate complex technical strategies into compelling executive narratives, proposals and statements of work.
• Localise global application offers and help develop industry-specific offerings, accelerators and thought leadership for the South African market.
• Mentor sales teams by raising technical capability and improving qualification discipline.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

Data & Analytics

MDM

Data Governance

Data Engineering

Data Cloud Platforms

Enterprise apps

Software engineering

Digital platforms

Data platforms

Analytics tools

AI/ML

AI adoption

Information governance

Ontology modelling

Knowledge graphs

Metadata management

Semantic architectures

Microsoft Data & AI

AWS Data & AI

Snowflake

Industry architectures

Commercial acumen

Proposal development

Executive presentation

Delivery models

Estimating

Commercial risk

Tools

Microsoft SQL Server

Snowflake

Databricks

Azure

AWS

Job description

NTT DATA in South Africa seeks a Senior Data Architect to act as a strategic technical advisor across Sales, Clients, and Delivery, shaping data and AI go-to-market strategies and enterprise architectures. You will drive conversations on data strategy, governance, and cloud platforms with executives across industries.

The role covers advisory, opportunity shaping, and development of industry propositions for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Mining, and Healthcare, with a strong emphasis on