Strategic Data Scientist & ML Engineer

Pepkor Lifestyle; Sandton; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

Pepkor Lifestyle is seeking a Data Scientist to analyse complex datasets and build interpretable models that inform business decisions. You will own the lifecycle of the solution from stakeholder conversations to long-term production health, with a pragmatic approach to AI and MLOps.

Collaborate with analysts and engineers, design robust pipelines in Python, SAS and SQL, and translate insights into clear actions for stakeholders across functions.

Qualifications

• Honours/Masters/PhD in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics or related quantitative field.
• Strong portfolio of data science work with production models.
• Fluent in Python, SAS and SQL with solid data engineering foundations.
• Experience deploying ML models and maintaining model health (MLOps).
• Excellent communication and ability to influence stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end data science lifecycle from problem framing to deployment.
• Develop and productionize statistical and ML models (classification/regression/clustering).
• Build robust data pipelines and automate data wrangling across systems.
• Translate complex findings into actionable business decisions for non-technical partners.
• Collaborate with data analysts, data engineers and stakeholders to scale impact.

Skills

Python

SQL

Machine Learning

Statistics

Data Visualization

Communication

Education

Honours/Masters/PhD in Data Science/Statistics/CS/Math

Tools

SAS

Git

GitHub

AWS

SAS Viya

scikit-learn

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Pepkor Lifestyle is seeking a Data Scientist to analyse complex datasets and build interpretable models that inform business decisions. You will own the lifecycle of the solution from stakeholder conversations to long-term production health, with a pragmatic approach to AI and MLOps.

Collaborate with analysts and engineers, design robust pipelines in Python, SAS and SQL, and translate insights into clear actions for stakeholders across functions.