Who are we?
MiWay is a direct financial services company. We are passionate about service excellence, convenience and offering our clients superior value products. Our Vision is to be a world-class direct financial services business that offers a complete array of services under one convenient umbrella – all managed online. We are positive that with the right people on board, we will continue to grow and give our clients the freedom to do things their way – free from worry and most importantly at peace with all the “what-ifs” of the world. Company values that every employee subscribes to are: Energy, Freedom, Accountability and Attitude. The ideal candidate is one who has the courage to be bold and subscribes to MiWay’s core values! Do you have a positive attitude, love a challenge, treat your colleagues with respect and look for solutions, not problems? If yes, then MiWay is the place for you!
About the role
Department: Data Intelligence and Governance
Reporting To: Head: Data Officer
Location: Kosmosdal (Hybrid)
What will you do?
This is a hands-on, engineering-first leadership role. As Lead Data Engineer, you will architect, build and optimise the end-to-end data engineering platform that powers MiWay – personally writing and reviewing production-grade code, not just designing on paper. Your first mandate is to spearhead the ground-up rebuild of our data warehouse using modern data engineering practices (robust ELT/ELT pipelines, layered/medallion modelling and automation), followed by leading our migration to a cloud-native data platform.
You will engineer data flows that are accurate, scalable, performant and cost-efficient, providing the trusted foundation on which our Business Intelligence, analytics and Actuarial teams build. While you will set architectural direction and mentor the team, success in this role is measured by what you build and ship, not only what you specify.
What will make you successful in this role?
Qualification Required
• Bachelor’s Degree or appropriate certificate in Computer Science, Information systems, Data engineering, or a related quantitative field.
Minimum Experience
• Minimum of 7 years in hands-on data engineering, with deep, demonstrable experience designing and building production ETL/ELT pipelines and data warehouses (BI/reporting experience alone is not sufficient).
• Cloud data platforms (essential): Proven, hands-on experience building and operating data solutions on at least one major cloud platform (Azure preferred, e.g. Azure Data Factory, Synapse, Fabric, Databricks; AWS or GCP equivalents also considered).
• Cloud migration experience (highly advantageous): Track record of migrating on-premise data warehouses or ETL workloads to a cloud-native architecture.
• Strong software-engineering fundamentals: Advanced SQL plus a programming language (Python preferred), version control (Git), CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code exposure.
• Leadership experience: Relevant experience in management, team lead, or senior supervisory capacity is advantageous
• Industry expertise: Demonstrable experience working within the Short-Term Insurance or broader Financial Services industry is advantageous.
Deliverables
The Lead Data Engineer will be the key builder driving the rebuild of MiWay’s data warehouse and the subsequent migration to a cloud-native data platform. This is a delivery role: you will spend the majority of your time engineering, coding and optimising data pipelines and platform components. Key deliverables include:
• Data warehouse build: Engineer and deliver a scalable, well-documented data warehouse (layered / medallion architecture) from the ground up, producing standardised, clean and accurate data for the BI and Actuarial teams.
• Pipeline engineering and data modelling: Create and maintain complex ETL/ELT pipelines and dimensional models (Star/Snowflake schemas) that simplify insurance reporting.
• Performance tuning: Ongoing optimisation of SQL, indexing, partitioning and stored procedures – and, in the cloud, of compute/storage and pipeline cost – to ensure low reporting latency and cost efficiency.
• Governance and security: Implementation of rigorous data security protocols and lineage tracking to comply with MiWay’s data governance standards.
• Cloud migration: Plan and execute the migration of the data warehouse and ETL/ELT workloads to a cloud-native platform – including evaluating and recommending cloud services, integration tooling and the migration approach.
Competencies Required
• Legacy Systems: Understanding of on-premises architecture (Oracle/SQL Server) and how to extract data from core systems (e.g., TIA).
• Cloud-native data engineering: Hands-on ability to build and operate data pipelines and warehouses on a modern cloud platform (e.g., Azure Data Factory / Synapse / Fabric / Databricks), including orchestration, monitoring and cost optimisation.
• In-depth understanding of database management systems, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), and the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) framework.
• Expert SQL and hands-on data-movement/transformation engineering (e.g., SSIS today, migrating to cloud-native pipelines such as Azure Data Factory/Synapse), plus a scripting/programming language (Python preferred) and version control (Git). Power BI/SSRS and the wider Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., PowerApps) are beneficial but secondary to engineering skill.
Knowledge and Skills
Personal Attributes
Build a successful career with us
We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.
Core Competencies
Turnaround time
The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers. Deadline to apply: 06 August 2026.
Our commitment to transformation
At MiWay we believe in cultivating a positive and dynamic working environment that gives you freedom and opportunity to succeed. MiWay is committed to transformation and embracing diversity. This is what drives us to achieve a multicultural workplace with employment equity as a key goal to create an inclusive workforce, reflective of the demographics of our society.