Manager - Data Engineer IT Squad.Group Strategy and Transformation

MTN is undergoing a significant transformation to become a platform-led, data-powered, and AI-native enterprise. This journey is driven by the increasing demand for intelligent data products that are scalable, market-responsive, and rooted in strong data governance. DataCo, as the Group’s strategic data enablement unit, is tasked with delivering products and platforms that unlock value from telco, geospatial, and behavioural datasets, both for internal operations and external clients.

Central to this journey is the creation of robust data infrastructure that supports advanced analytics, AI, and external monetisation use cases. DataCo, MTN Group’s centralised data enablement function, is tasked with building and maintaining a high-quality data estate that is interoperable across OpCos and extendable to strategic partners and clients.

Global Influences:
The global economy is undergoing rapid digital transformation, with AI and machine learning emerging as core differentiators for competitive advantage. Enterprises are embedding predictive intelligence into their operations, products, and customer experiences to enhance efficiency, agility, and revenue growth. Meanwhile, cloud-native analytics platforms, federated learning, and MLOps frameworks are standardising how AI is scaled across complex, multi-market organisations.
Heightened focus on data ethics, fairness, and regulatory compliance is also shaping the design of AI systems. As governments tighten rules around data privacy, bias mitigation, and model explainability, organisations must ensure that AI is not only effective but also responsible and trustworthy.

Industry Drivers:
In the telecommunications sector, predictive analytics has become central to driving value from large-scale, real-time data generated by mobile networks, customer usage, and behavioral patterns. Use cases such as churn prediction, next-best-offer recommendations, network anomaly detection, and location-based targeting are no longer aspirational , they are expected. As telcos evolve into techcos and platform businesses, the ability to productise and monetise AI capabilities across industries such as FMCG, Retail, finance, and public services becomes a critical growth lever.
Additionally, as data monetisation becomes mainstream, clients are not just asking for raw data but for intelligent insights, predictive signals, and decision-ready outputs  all of which require robust data science capacity.

Organisational Mandate:

MTN DataCo is positioned at the forefront of MTN Group’s transformation into a data-powered, AI-native enterprise. The organisation is building a multi-OpCo data ecosystem capable of scaling advanced analytics across internal functions (e.g., marketing, sales, finance, networks) and external markets. This includes delivering reusable AI models, creating monetisable analytics solutions, and integrating intelligence into products and consulting services.
Within this context, the Product Owner/Manager plays a critical role in translating MTN’s DDO strategy into high-impact data intelligence solutions. These products must serve diverse users, from OpCo teams to multinational clients, while aligning with MTN’s consulting services and monetisation roadmaps. As the product lead, the incumbent must navigate a federated technology landscape, orchestrate agile delivery, and ensure that MTN’s data products are competitive, compliant, and commercially viable.

Organization Values:

At MTN we believe that understanding our people’s needs and aspirations is key to creating experiences that delight you at work, every day. We are committed to fostering an environment where every member of our Y’ello Family is heard, understood, and empowered to live an inspired life. Our values keep us grounded and moving in the right direction. Most importantly, they keep us honest. It is not something we claim to be. It is in our DNA.
As an organisation, we consider it our mission to create an exciting and rewarding place to work, where our people can be themselves, thrive in positivity and ignite their full potential. A workplace that boosts creativity and innovation, improves productivity, and ultimately drives meaningful results. A workplace that is built on relationships and achieving a purpose that is bigger than us. This is what we want you to experience with us!
Our commitments go beyond an organisational promise. It is in our leadership and managerial ethos to meaningfully partner with our employees, customers, and stakeholders with a vision to realise our shared goals. 
 

Pipeline Design & Optimisation

•    Take full ownership of the design, development, and maintenance of real-time and batch data pipelines that power telco, geospatial, and behavioural analytics across the enterprise.
•    Leverage tools such as Spark, Kafka, SQL, and Python to build high-performance pipelines that meet business SLAs for latency, throughput, and resilience.
•    Drive continuous improvement in pipeline architecture to optimise cost, scalability, and cross-system efficiency in hybrid cloud environments.
•    Act as the key integration point between IT systems and the DataCo analytics ecosystem, ensuring seamless data flow across platforms.

• Big Data Infrastructure Management
•     Lead the operation and optimisation of MTN’s large-scale data infrastructure, including Hadoop, Spark, Databricks, and other distributed computing frameworks.
•     Manage ingestion and processing of high-volume telco data (e.g., CDRs, DPI, trace data, mobility signals), ensuring consistency, availability, and security.
•     Partner with IT and infrastructure teams to pre-empt system constraints and deliver scalable solutions that meet OpCo and Group data needs.

Data Quality & Validation

•     Proactively embed end-to-end data quality controls into ingestion workflows, including validation, anomaly detection, and cleansing pipelines.
•     Champion standardisation of metadata, lineage tracking, and access control across pipelines in collaboration with governance and security teams.
•     Ensure adherence to MTN Group’s data privacy, compliance, and Responsible AI policies, enabling trusted internal and external data use.

Analytics & AI Readiness Enablement

•    Deliver ML- and analytics-ready feature datasets with strong version control and reproducibility across markets and use cases.
•    Partner with Data Science, BI, and GIS teams to co-create structured data layers for predictive models, dashboards, and industry-specific insights.
•    Establish reusable components (e.g., curated tables, transformation logic, catalogues) that accelerate time-to-value across OpCos.
5.    DevOps & CI/CD Integration
•    Implement automated deployment pipelines using CI/CD tooling (e.g., GitLab CI, Terraform, Azure DevOps), enabling agile and reliable delivery of data engineering assets.
•    Lead monitoring and observability practices across pipelines, using performance dashboards, alerts, and health checks to ensure system uptime and recovery readiness.
•    Work hand-in-hand with IT platform teams to streamline deployment in hybrid and federated environments, accelerating delivery cycles and reducing operational friction
 

Education:

•     Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline (required)
•     Master’s degree in Data Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, or Big Data Architecture (advantageous)
•     Industry certifications in cloud platforms (Azure, GCP, AWS), big data frameworks (Spark, Hadoop), or DevOps/DataOps tools are strongly advantageous

Experience:

•     Minimum of 5- 8 years of experience in data engineering, with at least 3+ years in a senior or lead capacity, managing high-throughput data environments
•     Demonstrated experience designing and optimising real-time and batch pipelines across cloud and on-prem infrastructures
•     Proven track record in telco-scale data processing, including handling of CDRs, DPI logs, mobility signals, or similar high-volume signals
•     Experience driving cross-functional delivery in partnership with platform teams, IT infrastructure, governance, and product squads
•     Familiarity with data monetisation, data productisation, or data enablement in platform or consulting contexts is preferred

Competencies:

•    Data Pipeline Mastery: Expert in building and scaling real-time and batch data pipelines using Spark, Kafka, SQL, and Python
•    Big Data Infrastructure Leadership: Deep knowledge of distributed systems (Hadoop, Databricks, Hive) and hybrid cloud environments
•    Cloud & DevOps Integration: Skilled in CI/CD, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), IaC, and observability tools for data systems
•    Governance & Compliance Alignment: Designs pipelines that embed data lineage, security tagging, access control, and policy enforcement
•    System Optimisation: Drives performance tuning, cost efficiency, fault tolerance, and workload automation at scale
•    Team Enablement: Mentors data engineers, drives capability uplift across OpCos, and standardises reusable engineering components
•    Cross-functional Influence: Proactively engages with IT, security, architecture, and analytics functions to accelerate delivery and integration