M-Pesa Africa is seeking a Senior Data Architect to lead and own the enterprise data architecture across its multi-market environment. This role spans transactional, operational, analytical, and AI/ML data domains, ensuring data infrastructure supports payment rails, API analytics, fraud detection, and regulatory reporting across six markets.
Responsibilities
Data Architecture & Strategy
- Own the enterprise data architecture across M-PESA Africa's multi-market environment.
- Define and enforce data modelling standards, data flow patterns, and integration architecture for real-time and batch processing pipelines.
- Lead architecture design for data platforms supporting payment rails, API analytics, fraud and AML detection, and regulatory reporting.
- Drive the transition to modern data architectures such as data mesh, data lakehouse, and event-driven patterns.
Data Governance & Standards
- Establish enterprise-wide data governance frameworks, data quality standards, and master data management (MDM) policies.
- Define data classification, lineage, and cataloguing standards to ensure traceability from source systems through to consumption layers.
- Partner with Compliance and Legal teams to ensure data architectures meet local regulatory and cross-border data sovereignty requirements.
Integration & Platform Architecture
- Architect data integration patterns between M-PESA core systems, third-party platforms, and analytics/AI layers.
- Collaborate with API gateway teams to define event-driven, API-first data exchange patterns.
- Design and govern streaming and CDC pipelines using technologies such as Apache Kafka and Oracle GoldenGate.
AI & Analytics Enablement
- Design data architectures that underpin AI/ML use cases including transaction monitoring and predictive analytics.
- Define feature store design, data pipeline standards, and model serving infrastructure patterns.
- Evaluate and onboard vector databases and LLM-ready data infrastructure.
Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement
- Serve as the senior data architecture voice in Architecture Review Boards and governance bodies.
- Mentor and coach mid-level data engineers and architects.
- Produce executive-ready architecture artefacts (C4/Mermaid diagrams, ADRs).
- Lead vendor evaluations for data platform tools and cloud data services.
Qualifications and Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or a related field.
- Minimum of 3 years of experience in a senior or lead capacity in data architecture, data engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Proven track record designing enterprise-scale data platforms in financial services, fintech, or telecommunications.
- Deep expertise in data modelling (conceptual, logical, physical) for both OLTP and OLAP systems.
- Hands-on experience with cloud data platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and big data technologies (Spark, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, etc.).
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should apply online through the Safaricom career portal on the Oracle Cloud platform at the following link: Apply Here.
