Manager – Data & Big Data Operations at Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA)

Job Summary

The job holder is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the infrastructure and tools that will enable the organization to process and analyse large volumes of structured and unstructured data. The role is critical for leveraging big data technologies to derive actionable insights and support data-driven decision-making.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of the Big Data stack (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, or cloud-native equivalents like Azure Synapse/Google BigQuery).
• Develop and implement data operations strategies aligned with organizational goals, ensuring efficiency, scalability, and sustainability.
• Ensure data analytics platforms and infrastructure is elastic enough to handle any variations in data and analytics traffic including unexpected spikes.
• Oversee the ingestion of unstructured and semi-structured data into a centralized repository for analytics.
• Evaluate, implement, and optimize data tools, platforms, and emerging technologies to enhance operational performance and analytics capability.
• Maintain real-time data pipelines that allow for immediate analytics e.g. risk profiling and "on-the-spot" compliance alerts.
• Optimize massive batch ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)/ELT (Extract, Load and Transform jobs that move data from operational databases into the data warehousing for reporting.
• Use tools like Apache Airflow to manage complex dependencies between hundreds of different data workflows across KRA’s internal and external ecosystems.
• Implement disaster recovery and failover strategies to ensure that the Data Management & Analytics (DM&A) tools are available 24/7.
• Work with Data Scientists to optimize complex SQL or NoSQL queries.
• Manage the compute and storage costs of the Big Data environment, ensuring KRA gets maximum ROI on its hardware or cloud spend.
• Implement fine-grained access control (Role-Based Access Control) to ensure sensitive information is only accessible to authorized users.
• Oversee the technical implementation of data masking and encryption "at rest" and "in transit" to comply with the Data Protection Act.
• Maintain logs of who accessed what data and when, providing a "activity trails" for security audits.
• Ensure data integrity, accuracy, security, and compliance with regulatory, audit, integrity, QMS, and risk management frameworks.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders, resolve data-related issues, and advise leadership through actionable insights and reliable reporting.
• Implement corporate initiatives in the Unit: Performance Management, Audit, Integrity, Quality Management Systems, and Risk Management.
• Support staff career development and performance enhancement within the unit, ensuring alignment with departmental goals.

Person Specifications

For appointment to this job, the candidate must have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Business Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Engineering or related and equivalent qualification from a recognized university.
• Master’s Degree in Information Technology, Business Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Engineering or related and equivalent qualification from a recognized university is an added advantage.
• Training or certification in any of the following areas: Data Engineering, big data frameworks, DevOps, MLOps, or cloud platforms
• Leadership Course lasting not less than four (4) weeks from a recognized institution is an added advantage.
• Membership to a relevant professional body
• Cumulative service period of five (5) years relevant work experience, two (2) of which should have been in first level management position or comparable position.

 Key Competencies

• Sound decision-making capabilities
• Ethics and integrity
• Accountability
• Professionalism
• Ability to work under pressure
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Good awareness of the operating environment
• Analytical and creative thinking skills