Principal Specialist BI Architect

at  Sabenza IT

Principal Specialist BI Architect Architect - IT
Johannesburg - Gauteng - South Africa
The Principal Specialist BI Architect is a senior role responsible for defining and leading the Business Intelligence (BI) architecture strategy, design, and implementation of complex and scalable BI solutions. This individual will collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop data-driven insights, optimize data structures, and drive business growth. The Principal Specialist BI Architect will provide expert guidance on BI technologies, data modeling, and best practices.
Key Performance Objectives:

Innovation and Continuous Improvements:

• Continuously evaluate and improve processes and systems to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve data quality.
• Develop metrics and KPIs that measure the success of initiatives and track progress towards the teams and business goals.
• Explore and leverage emerging technologies, continuously evaluating their potential to drive business value and determine when they should be integrated into the organisation strategy.
• Encourage team members to experiment with new technologies, techniques, and approaches, fostering a culture that values continuous learning and innovating.
• Identify training and development opportunities for team members to stay up to date on the latest technologies, techniques, and approaches, and ensure that these are budgeted for.

Data Management, Governance and Analytics:

• Implement best practices in data management, governance, and analytics to ensure the accuracy, security, and usability of the data.
• Ensure that data is managed in a consistent and secure manner, and that governance policies are in place to protect sensitive information.
• Ensure that data is of high quality, with proper validation, cleansing, and enrichment processes in place and continuously monitor data quality and ensure that data is accurate, accessible, and usable for business purposes.
• Deploy analytics tools and platforms that enable the business to extract insights from data and make informed decisions.
• Ensure that tools are user-friendly and that all team members have the skills and knowledge they need to use them effectively.

Operational Delivery:

• Maintain, support, and enhance the business intelligence data backend, including data warehouses
• Map configurations and complex data architectures, ensuring documentation meets current and forecasted needs.
• Formulate and recommend standards for achieving maximum performance and efficiency of the data warehouse ecosystem.
• Participate in the planning for retirement of systems or programs, and migration of systems infrastructure
• Work closely with business advisory to ensure prioritisation of organisational and departmental objectives and projects.
• Champion data quality, integrity, and reliability throughout CII by designing and promoting best practices.
• Provide assistance to data engineers and analysts with issues needing technical expertise or complex systems and/or programming knowledge.
• Provide on-the-job training for new or less experienced team members.

Provide technical training to external team members to foster stronger cross-departmental relations.

• Provide input to architectural decision making.
• Be involved in architecting and developing micro-service platforms and interfaces.
• Participate in the agile delivery process as and when need.

People Management:

• Manage team members to ensure effective delivery of business unit objectives
• Develop a high performing team by embedding formal performance development and informal coaching
• Encourage frequent knowledge sharing between team members
• Determine and analyse development needs for the team and ensure that identified training requirements are budgeted for and executed
• Interview and recruit new members of the team, including determining appropriate compensation levels with input from HR
• Create effective workforce and recruitment demand plans to ensure that current and future business requirements can be met
• Review and update the departments organisation structure and role descriptions on at least an annual basis to ensure that they are fit for purpose and contain all the accountabilities of each team member
• Approve leave requests for team members and create a leave plan to ensure adequate coverage
• When required, initiate disciplinary processes for team members calling on HR for support
• Resolve grievances raised by team members and escalate only if required
• Address poor performance of any team member through the formal Performance Improvement Programme and ensure that continued poor performance is appropriately dealt with
• Motivate team members and ensure that their efforts are recognised

Technical Competencies

• Understanding of the architecture frameworks, analytics platforms and data structures
• Business and data modelling
• Azure data services and Power BI
• Advanced SQL skills
• Data Warehousing Concepts
• Implementation of Cloud Technology

Qualifications/Experience/Skills:

• Post Graduate qualification in information technology or related field
• A minimum of 5 years experience in an analytics/data/technology environment
• A minimum of 5 years BI Development experience in an enterprise environment
• A minimum of 5 years BI Solution Architecture experience

Experience working with cloud technologies will be advantageous
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Please refer the Job description for details