Senior Manager – Data Engineering and Governance at Kenya Airways

Purpose

Reporting to the Head, Data, Analytics & AI, the Head of Data Engineering & Governance will be responsible for leading a team of data engineers and data governance to design and deliver a data engineering solution for our internal and external facing business lines. You will get a chance to leverage your strategic planning, business analysis and technical knowledge of data engineering, data governance, tools, and data architecture definition. In addition to managing our portfolio of datasets, you will play key roles in helping our data scientists and analysts to leverage these datasets effectively.

Responsibilities

• Using architecture and data engineering techniques to design and provide tools dedicated to data extraction, analysis and enhancement (build common service layers as much as possible)
• Perform research and analysis (including technological watch) as needed to understand market trends and impact
• Contribute to building & maintaining the global analytic environment of SGL (which includes Data Science & Big data platform, Data Catalog and Data Capture tools) to ease exploitation of data
• Take part in the strategic comity for Data Analytics Solution
• Ensure compliance with policies related to Data Management and Data Protection, in close relationship with the Data Protection Officer, Security & Risk regulation teams
• Contribute to building data engineering pipelines & API for Data Science / Big Data applications
• Take active part in data architecture conception, environments design, core components development based on conceptual architecture/design, etc.
• Design, manage and support PoC, contribute to the choice of tools (build or buy) with all the team & the Group, test solutions. Identify and challenge partners and providers when relevant.
• Document services and build all relevant documentation
• Act as a SME and tech lead / veteran for any data engineering question and manage data engineers within the Data Analytics Solution organization.
• Promote data cultural change within the division to build a data-driven company (convince people of the importance of data, how it should be managed and used, …)
• Collaborate with SGL local teams, FIT department colleagues, IT SME (functional, data, solution and technical architects, data scientists, innovators, business experts…)
• Promote services, contribute to the identification of innovative initiatives within the Group, share information on new technologies in dedicated internal communities.

Skills

• Interpersonal Skills: A team-builder, be result-oriented, be proactive and self-driven requiring minimal supervision, be open and welcoming to change, be a creative and strategic thinker, have innovative problem-solving skills, be highly organized, have an ability to handle multiple simultaneous tasks prioritize and meet tight deadlines, and demonstrate calmness in times of uncertainty and stress.
• People Skills: a person who can form strong, lasting, and meaningful bonds with other people. This will make him an approachable and trustworthy individual who junior personnel readily follow and who senior executives and stakeholders trust and whose insights they give credit to, making execution of his duties much easier.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Software Engineering, Engineering, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Computer Science, Economics, or any other related quantitative field.
• Big Data, Analytics or Data Science certification from recognized institutions.
• At least 5 years’ experience in BI developments.
• Proven and successful experience track record of leading high-performing data engineering teams.
• Proven experience on innovation implementation from exploration to production: these may include containerization, Machine learning/AI, Agile environment, on premise and cloud (Azure, AWS, Google) (mandatory).