Head of Data

TalentSafari SAS

Job Overview

Location

Kampala

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Lead the end-to-end evolution of the company’s data function, including strategy, architecture, team building, and delivery of customer-facing data products that leverage the organization’s unique transaction-level data moat across African mobile money networks.
• Define and own the 2-3 year data roadmap in close collaboration with product and engineering leaders, identifying new revenue-generating data products uniquely enabled by the company’s proprietary datasets.
• Architect and oversee the data infrastructure stack—including Kafka, Postgres/BigQuery/Redshift, Airflow, dbt, and Superset—ensuring scalability, reliability, and integration with both cloud (GCP/AWS) and on-premise environments.
• Establish and maintain SLAs for data uptime, quality, freshness, and accessibility across internal teams and external partners, including telcos, banks, and mobile money agents.
• Structure and scale the data team by identifying and hiring key roles such as data engineers, analytics engineers, and BI specialists to complement your technical expertise and reduce hands-on burden over time.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for commercial conversations, partner integrations, contract negotiations, and client demos, translating technical capabilities into business value during pitch and sales cycles.
• Execute hands-on data work—including writing SQL and Python, debugging ETL pipelines, building dashboards, and triaging technical escalations from support and clients—until the team scales to assume these responsibilities.
• Prioritize and execute on competing data requests from both internal stakeholders and external customers, balancing speed, accuracy, and resource constraints in a high-leverage, resource-constrained startup environment.
• Invest time in researching and de-risking complex data requirements through code spikes, testing, and tracer bullets, ensuring technical feasibility before committing to delivery timelines.
• Document, track, and prioritize technical debt within the data infrastructure to ensure long-term maintainability and performance.
• Implement quality control and monitoring systems for data pipelines and reporting layers to proactively detect and resolve anomalies, outages, or inconsistencies.
• Establish a clear cadence for goal-setting, cross-functional communication, and performance tracking for the data function, ensuring alignment with commercial and product objectives.
• Develop and deliver training programs to upskill internal teams and external clients on how to interpret, access, and leverage reporting tools and data-powered products to drive data-informed decision-making.
• Shape a company-wide “Data Culture” by defining how teams should engage with data, what expectations exist for data reliability and responsiveness, and how insights are operationalized across departments.
• Work directly with the CEO and Head of Product, with a seat at strategic tables for commercial, product, and partnership decisions, ensuring data is treated as a first-class business function—not a support service.
• Operate remotely with a distributed team across Africa, maintaining clear communication, accountability, and alignment despite geographical and cultural diversity.
• Balance strategic leadership with hands-on execution during the early growth phase, transitioning from doing to leading as the team expands and matures.
• Act as the bridge between technical data systems and business outcomes, translating deep technical expertise into commercial opportunities that expand financial inclusion across underserved markets.
• Maintain a relentless focus on users—understanding the needs of mobile money agents, small businesses, telcos, and banks to ensure data products solve real-world problems.

🎯 Requirements

• 8+ years in data roles, with 3+ years leading a team
• Expert SQL and Python
• Deep experience with a modern data stack (Kafka, Postgres/BigQuery/Redshift, Airflow, dbt, Superset)
• Cloud-native experience (GCP and/or AWS)
• Proven experience building customer-facing data products, not just internal reporting
• Comfort operating remotely with a distributed team

🏖️ Benefits

• Huge variety of challenges and exposure to multiple markets across Africa
• Opportunity to work with Africa’s largest telcos and banks, as well as individual mobile money agents
• Opportunity to contribute to financial inclusion and enable meaningful work for women and underserved populations
• High-leverage role with direct influence on product, commercial, and strategic decisions

Skills & Technologies

Python

PostgreSQL

AWS

GCP

REST

Remote

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TalentSafari SAS

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About TalentSafari SAS

French recruitment agency matching tech talent with startups and scale-ups through curated talent pools, skill assessments and streamlined hiring processes. Offers permanent and freelance placements across software engineering, data, product and design roles. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Paris, it combines human expertise with AI-driven matching to reduce time-to-hire for fast-growing European companies while providing career coaching and market insights to candidates.

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