Job title: Data Engineer
Company: Emergent Africa
Location / workplace type: South Africa – Hybrid or Remote (occasional client onsite)
Employment type: Full-time
Seniority: Mid-Senior
Function: Engineering, Data & Analytics
Industries: Management Consulting, Information Services, Technology

About Emergent Africa

We help organisations turn data and digital into decisions that deliver measurable outcomes across Strategy, Digital, Decision Intelligence, and Sustainability.

The role

We are seeking a skilled and proactive Data Engineer with 4–5 years of experience to join our growing data team to build robust, secure data foundations-pipelines, models, and platforms-that power analytics, decision intelligence, and digital products for clients across sectors.

The ideal candidate will have strong SQL expertise, experience in Power BI dashboard development, and a solid understanding of master data management (MDM), data quality (DQ) rule implementation, and data integration processes.

What you’ll do

• Design, build and operate scalable ELT/ETL pipelines (batch & streaming).
• Develop tested data models for lakes/warehouses.
• Implement DataOps (version control, CI/CD, observability).
• Enforce data quality, lineage and documentation.
• Integrate APIs, events, and SaaS sources; collaborate with data scientists/analysts to productionise features.
• Uphold security, governance and privacy.
• Support master/reference data and MDM enablement.

Qualifications (Required) – Degrees & Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Computer/Electrical Engineering, or closely related field.
• 3+ years professional experience in data engineering (or 5+ years relevant experience in lieu of a degree).
• Proficient SQL and Python.

Qualifications (Advantageous)

• Postgraduate degree (e.g., BSc Hons/MSc) in a relevant field.
• Containers and orchestration; Kafka/Kinesis/Pub/Sub.
• Data quality tools, and MDM / Data Governance exposure.
• Cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect/Big Data or Data Analytics, Azure Data Engineer Associate, Google Professional Data Engineer).

Personal Attributes

• Detail-oriented with a strong commitment to data accuracy.
• Proactive and self-motivated.
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.