Senior Specialist Data Scientist

Absa Group; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 800 000 - 1 200 000; Full time

Job summary

A leading African banking organization is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to provide specialist advice and support for data analysis. The role involves applying data mining and statistical techniques to build machine learning models and drive better business decisions. Candidates should have a strong background in data analysis and experience in leading teams. This position offers a unique opportunity to be part of a growth journey within an esteemed financial institution.

Qualifications

• Experience in data mining and statistical analysis.
• Proficient in building machine learning models.
• Strong analytical skills to interpret complex data.

Responsibilities

• Provide specialist advice and support on data analysis.
• Translate business challenges into data solutions.
• Manage project discipline to document scope changes.

Skills

Data mining techniques

Statistical analysis

Machine learning models

Data interpretation

Project management

Education

Bachelor's Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Statistics

Bachelor Honours Degree: Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences

Tools

Advanced statistics tools

Data visualization software

Job description

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

To provide specialist advice and support on data analyst delivery, methods and techniques; enabling the construction, maintenance and expansion of data analysis. Apply data mining techniques, statistical analysis, and building high quality machine learning models integrated with our business decisions e.g., products, sales and customer experience delivery. The role will be a senior agile collaborator within a team of specialist data scientists to help Absa discover the insights hidden in its vast amounts of data, and help enable smarter decisions to deliver better products and services. The senior data scientist will be expected to take on the most complex projects and also provide technical mentoring and coaching for other team members.

Job Description

To provide specialist advice and support on data analyst delivery, methods and techniques; enabling the construction, maintenance and expansion of data analysis. Apply data mining techniques, statistical analysis, and building high quality machine learning models integrated with our business decisions e.g., products, sales and customer experience delivery. The role will be a senior agile collaborator within a team of specialist data scientists to help Absa discover the insights hidden in its vast amounts of data, and help enable smarter decisions to deliver better products and services. The senior data scientist will be expected to take on the most complex projects and also provide technical mentoring and coaching for other team members.

Analytics and Insights

• Translate the business challenges into key questions that can be solved with data solutions.
• Participate in data acquisition, data mining, and data project management duties relating to projects.
• Design fit-for-purpose data interpretation & analysis approaches & create customized data models, algorithms, machine learning tools and recommendation engines to achieve the desired business outcome.
• Use advanced data science skills to mine & interpret data, including but not limited to advanced statistics, data wrangling, data mining, data analysis, feature engineering & predictive modeling, distributed computing, machine learning tools & data intuition.
• Analyse findings from research and analytics to generate insights into target customer segments.
• Assist users, technical staff and management to resolve issues on project implementation.
• Design market research projects in line with research objectives with qualitative and quantitative analysis teams.
• Develop analytical models for the testing of business hypotheses and data analysis.
• Develop business hypotheses with various business teams to create analytical models for generating insights from data.
• Develop goals and KPIs for media channels with other departments or stakeholders.
• Develop plans for data analytics and market research projects based on business objectives.
• Devise solutions to manage legal and regulatory restrictions on the collection and use of market and customer data.
• Identify data sources for data analytics and newer ways to leverage available data.
• Implement data quality control standards and methods.
• Manage project discipline to document scope changes, issues and risks.
• Manage project to meet schedules, budget, manpower and technical quality targets.
• Partner with stakeholders or departments to define measurements for campaigns.
• Produce analytics reports and data visualisation dashboards to enable business stakeholders to understand the data.
• Propose budgets for specific key analytics projects.
• Provide data and technology input to develop the organisation's data strategy.
• Provide input on existing customer measurement infrastructure to meet organisation's research objectives.
• Support regular project reviews to recommend schedule changes and cost or resource adjustments.

Stakeholder Management

• Build and maintain strong relationships with business stakeholders to ensure alignment of analytics solutions with business objectives.
• Communicate analytical findings, project progress and business insights to senior leaders and cross-functional teams.
• Facilitate collaboration between business units, technology teams and data teams to drive adoption of analytics solutions.

Team Management

• Lead, coach and mentor a team of data scientists, analysts and data engineers to ensure high-quality delivery.
• Allocate resources effectively across projects and support team members in their professional development.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, innovation and strong analytical execution within the team.

Quality Control

• Oversee the accuracy, consistency and reliability of analytical outputs across all projects.
• Ensure adherence to analytical best practices, coding standards, model validation processes and documentation requirements.
• Conduct regular quality reviews and implement corrective actions where needed to maintain excellence in delivery.

Data Governance and Control

• Understand frameworks, sources of data and data flows.
• Ensure accuracy of data collected and ensure data governance requirements are met and adhered to.
• Drive data governance responsibilities across all pieces of work.

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Statistics, Bachelor Honours Degree: Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised