Senior Specialist: Data Governance

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Job Summary

The Head of Compliance Data Strategy and Governance is accountable for establishing and leading the Compliance within the broader Enterprise data strategy execution, data governance, and data enablement to ensure data is trusted, discoverable, secure, compliant, and fit-for-purpose for business decisioning, analytics, AI, regulatory reporting, and operational efficiency.
The role sets the direction, operating model, frameworks, and controls that enable the organisation to treat data as a strategic asset, partnering with business and technology leaders to embed governance into day-to-day delivery and accelerate responsible data use.

Job Description

1. Data Strategy & Roadmap

·       Define and maintain the compliance data strategy aligned to business priorities.

·       Develop and govern a multi-year data roadmap with clear milestones and benefits.

·       Establish prioritisation mechanisms for data initiatives based on value, risk, and feasibility.

·       Translate strategy into executable plans across governance, quality, metadata, lineage, and enablement.

·       Partner with Technology Architecture to define target state data architecture for Compliance.

·       Ensure alignment with enterprise data platforms (i.e. data lake, customer master, reporting layers, regulatory platforms).

·       Influence technology investment decisions impacting Compliance data

2. Data Governance Operating Model & Decision Rights

·       Define and implement the data governance operating model, roles, and decision rights.

·       Establish and lead enterprise data governance forums.

·       Embed governance into delivery lifecycles and operational processes.

·       Implement issue, exception, and escalation management workflows.

·       Report quantified value (reduction in audit findings, improved reporting timelines, reduced remediation cost).

·       Define KPIs for data quality, adoption, control effectiveness and regulatory remediation.

·       Define and implement a Compliance Data Product operating model (ownership, lifecycle, SLAs).

·       Escalation mandate for data risks that remain unresolved or exceed risk tolerance.

·       Authority to halt or suspend initiatives that present material data risk.

 

3. Accountability for Regulatory Critical Data

·       Ownership of regulatory data taxonomies and critical data elements (CDEs).

·       Oversight of data risk registers and regulatory data remediation programmes.

·       Formal linkage to Model Risk, Financial Crime, and Regulatory Reporting frameworks.

4. Data Enablement & Adoption

·       Drive data literacy and self-service data usage across the organisation.

·       Establish a data product and reusable dataset framework.

·       Enable discoverability through data catalogues and business glossaries.

·       Measure and improve adoption of governed data assets.

·       Ensure data is AI-ready, ethically governed, and compliant with privacy and responsible AI principles.

·       Enable traceability and explainability for AI/analytics models leveraging compliance data.

5. Data Quality, Metadata & Lineage

·       Define data quality standards, thresholds, and monitoring mechanisms.

·       Oversee remediation of data quality issues and root cause analysis.

·       Ensure consistent metadata, glossary, and lineage coverage for critical data.

·       Provide evidence of data controls for audit and regulatory purposes.

6. Stakeholder Leadership

·       Ensure alignment with data privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.

·       Support audits and regulatory engagements related to data.

·       Manage high-risk data issues and remediation plans.

·       Communicate progress, risks, and value to executives.

 

Required Experience & Skills:

·       BCom Maths, Statistics, Data Science, or relevant qualification

Extensive experience in data governance, data management, or analytics enablement.

·       Experience enabling business use of data, not just enforcing rules.

·       Leadership experience influencing executives and cross-functional teams.

·       Strong understanding of data quality, metadata, lineage, and privacy principles.

·       Strong understanding of control effectiveness, issue and exception management in managing data issues with regulatory or financial impact.

·       Proven ability to drive change, adoption, and measurable business outcomes.

·       Build and lead a high-performing team.

·       Experience operating in a highly regulated financial services environment.

·       Experience leading enterprise scale data transformation programmes.

·       Strong commercial acumen and ability to influence ExCo level stakeholders.

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised