Senior Data Scientist: Advanced Analytics & ML for Banking

Postbank (SOC) Ltd; Pretoria; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

South African Postbank SOC Limited is seeking a Data Scientist to independently design, develop, validate and operationalise advanced analytics and machine-learning solutions across business problem areas. You will translate regulatory questions into analytical approaches while ensuring auditable, production-ready outputs for decision-making.

Responsibilities include end-to-end analytics, data preparation, model risk governance, and stakeholder advisory.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, Engineering, Economics, or a related quantitative field (NQF Level 7).
• Honours or Masters degree in a quantitative, data science, analytics or related field (NQF Level 8/9 (Ideal)).
• 5+ Years Relevant data science, machine learning and algorithm-related experience at a specialist level.
• Experience in the Banking Industry (Advantageous).

Responsibilities

• Own assigned advanced analytics workstreams from problem framing to deployment-ready output.
• Translate business problems into analytical hypotheses, data requirements, modelling approaches and delivery plans.
• Design and build statistical, machine-learning and optimisation models using appropriate techniques and documented assumptions.
• Determine suitable validation, back-testing and monitoring approaches for assigned models and analytical outputs.
• Convert model and analysis results into clear business recommendations, implementation options and risk considerations for stakeholders.
• Acquire, integrate, profile and transform structured and unstructured data from approved sources.
• Design repeatable data preparation, feature engineering and analytical pipelines with appropriate quality controls.
• Maintain version-controlled code, model artefacts, assumptions, metadata, outputs and documentation for auditability and knowledge retention.
• Identify data-quality, lineage, completeness and integrity issues and recommend corrective actions to the Senior Specialist.
• Engage business, operations, BI, automation, data and technology stakeholders to clarify requirements and implementation constraints.
• Present analytical findings to technical and non-technical audiences in a clear, evidence-based manner.
• Provide specialist input into analytics standards, reusable methods, reusable code libraries and continuous-improvement initiatives.
• Guide junior analysts or project contributors on technical methods where required, without formal people-management accountability.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, Engineering, Economics, or a related quantitative field (NQF Level 7)

Honours or Masters degree in a quantitative, data science, analytics or related field (NQF Level 8/9)

5+ Years Relevant data science, machine learning and algorithm-related experience at a specialist level

Experience in the Banking Industry (Advantageous)

Job description

South African Postbank SOC Limited is seeking a Data Scientist to independently design, develop, validate and operationalise advanced analytics and machine-learning solutions across business problem areas. You will translate regulatory questions into analytical approaches while ensuring auditable, production-ready outputs for decision-making.

Responsibilities include end-to-end analytics, data preparation, model risk governance, and stakeholder advisory.