Sr Data Scientist, Digital Products & Experience

Sr Data Scientist, Digital Products & Experience

Date: 14 Jan 2025

Location: Bellville, Western Cape, ZA

Who are we?

Sanlam Fintech is a newly established digital first business within the Sanlam Group on a mission to democratize financial advice and solutions for everyone across the African continent. We exist to pioneer inclusive financial confidence helping people build strong foundations to bridge the gap in generational wealth. Our culture is that of agility and constant deployment, we believe in learning fast, learning cheap and learning forward. Our aim is to provide a work environment where knowledge workers can accelerate the development of their ideas and bring innovation to market, at the same time provide compelling career and development proposition that will enable them to realize their dreams.

Position Overview

As a data scientist your work is a canvas for change, painted with the data you explore and the insights you uncover. You're not just joining a team; you're embarking on a mission to reshape the financial landscape for all Africans, making tomorrow not just different, but better. Turning data into pathways, obstacles into stepping stones, and potential into reality. Together, we can build lasting financial confidence across Africa, one insight at a time. This is a data science role embedded in a team focused on creating a world-class digital financial platform that is insights driven and behaviorally aware, through curated, personalised and inclusive products and customer experience. This is a data science role focusing on driving continuous improvements to our retail credit products, both digital and financial.

Qualification and Experience

• 5+ years' experience as a data scientist with at least 2 in a similar product data science capacity
• Track record of high impact and investing in your own development.
• Data science experience in a product focused role specifically
• Experience working with Tableau or PowerBI. Competent in Python and SQL.
• Experience with digital products in an app environment
• Experience with cloud technologies like Snowflake and SageMaker
• Experience designing and analyzing client research

What you'll achieve in the first 12 months

• Wrangling data autonomously: Wrangle data into the ideal format for the necessary tool (e.g. Python, Tableau, PowerBI), no matter how raw and unstructured it is and what lake/lakehouse it’s stored in.
• Setting team metrics: Define holistic measurement frameworks that enable the team to explore their performance holistically and work with the team to identify and track the metrics that measure success
• Producing insights: Identify loosely defined commercial problems and produce meaningful insights that guide iterations of the team's products and go-to-market campaigns
• Developing ML models: Structure commercial problems into prediction problems by clarifying both what is being predicted and how that enables us to change our products or campaigns to obtain a better result. Develop and implement ML models for the highest priority prediction problems, ensuring outstanding model and product performance.
• Carrying out controlled experiments: Establish the learning goals of their team, crafting hypothesis statements and learning roadmap wherever needed. Design, execute and draw correct conclusions from experiments by confirming integrity of experiment, avoiding common pitfalls, and executing frequentist or Bayesian A/B analysis.
• Segmenting the client base: Using rule and unsupervised learning-based approaches to segment the client base so we can develop a deeper understanding of customers and build better products for them.
• Creating impactful visualisations: Produce data and interactive visualisations that enable the whole team to address their recurring reporting and insight needs, without your direct support.
• Partnering for impact: Partner with stakeholders to make sure they gain the confidence they need to drive changes in the product roadmap or ask for further insight.

How you'll think

You look for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. You are high agency, high ownership in everything you do. You know we own our future, only we can make it happen. If you find something that keeps us from our mission, you own it or work collaboratively with others until you find the right owner of it.

Where some see impossible, you see a way: You have the strong conviction in our ability to innovate and bring financial services, and financial confidence to everyone across the continent. You turn obstacles into opportunity, chance into change.

You move fast and fix things. You publish early and often, when you fail you learn and go again. You know that speed gives you the licence to fail, because you’re moving fast enough to correct course.

You seek out and value different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes. Making tomorrow not just different, but better.

What you'll enjoy

• Being in a high ownership, high ambiguity, high autonomy environment where the impact of your work matters. The ideal environment for your capability growth.
• Learn from the best. Get guidance from some of the most seasoned professionals around.
• Diving into projects that touch the lives of millions. Making a real difference in how people manage their money and plan their lives.
• Working with modern technologies, from Snowflake to SageMaker and AI-as a service AWS, leverage world class technologies to launch into your work.
• A chance to be the first data scientists in a newly formed domain team!

Build a successful career with us

We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.