Chief Data Architect

About the role

Absa is seeking a visionary Chief Data Architect to shape the strategic data architecture across its African operations. You will lead the design and delivery of enterprise‑wide data solutions, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and aligned with the group’s long‑term strategy.

Key responsibilities

• Own and maintain the enterprise data architecture blueprint, applying data fabric and data mesh principles.
• Define, certify, publish, and govern data product architecture patterns.
• Act as design authority for a federated lakehouse architecture, including medallion layers, open table formats, and multi‑cloud storage.
• Lead semantic architecture initiatives, driving FIBO/BIAN standards, ontology governance, and knowledge‑graph strategy.
• Contribute to group strategy and the technology roadmap for the business unit.
• Architect and evolve a federated data ownership model with clear governance guardrails.
• Collaborate across business units to ensure coherent, modular, and customer‑centric architectures.
• Teach and mentor teams in design thinking, evolutionary architectures, DevOps, and data‑driven engineering practices.

Required profile

• Extensive experience in enterprise data architecture within large, regulated organisations.
• Proven ability to influence strategy and drive cross‑functional collaboration.
• Strong knowledge of banking‑specific regulations such as BCBS 239, RDARR, POPIA/GDPR, data sovereignty, and EU AI Act implications.
• Demonstrated leadership in guiding technical teams and fostering innovation.

Required skills

• Data fabric and data mesh implementation
• Lakehouse architecture (medallion layers, open table formats)
• Multi‑cloud storage solutions
• Semantic architecture, ontology governance, knowledge‑graph design
• Design thinking, evolutionary architecture, DevOps practices