Head: Data Management Gauteng

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:-

The Head of Data Management will lead data management practices to ensure reliable, secure, and compliant information across the bank's technology platforms, operational systems, and reporting environments. Key responsibilities include developing a data management framework, leading data quality management, coordinating data reconciliation and control checks, and ensuring data protection and regulatory compliance. The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor's degree in a related field, a Certificate in Data Management, and at least 10 years of experience in the IT industry, with 8 years in data management or a related field.

**Job Title: Head of Data Management**

**Company: Postbank (SOC) Ltd**

**Job Purpose**

We are seeking an experienced and visionary Head of Data Management to lead our data management practices, ensuring reliable, secure, governed, and compliant information across our technology platforms, operational systems, retail banking data flows, and reporting environments. As the Head of Data Management, you will define and manage data governance, data ownership, data stewardship, data quality, data lineage, metadata, master data, reference data, data access, data lifecycle, and operational data control practices to protect customer, account, transaction, payment, card, social grant, and business information assets.

**Key Responsibilities**

**Data Management Strategy and Governance**

As the Head of Data Management, you will develop and implement a data management framework that guides data ownership, data stewardship, data quality, data control, and operational data practices across the bank. You will set data standards, data definitions, metadata requirements, naming conventions, reference data standards, and control procedures to support accountable management of information assets. You will also establish data governance forums and reporting routines to review data risks, quality issues, remediation progress, and control effectiveness.

**Banking Data Quality and Integrity Management**

You will lead data quality management across core banking, payment, switch, card, digital channel, finance, reconciliation, reporting, and analytics environments to improve information reliability. You will monitor data completeness, accuracy, timeliness, validity, and consistency to identify defects that affect service delivery, reconciliation, regulatory reporting, or decision making. You will also coordinate data quality remediation with technology, operations, finance, business, analytics, and vendor stakeholders to resolve root causes.

**Reconciliation Data and Operational Control**

You will coordinate data reconciliation, validation, and control checks to confirm integrity across critical banking processes. You will support reliable reconciliation between customer records, account records, sub-ledgers, General Ledger records, transaction stores, switch records, payment files, settlement files, finance records, and reporting outputs. You will also monitor data breaks, unmatched items, missing transactions, unusual postings, suspense trends, and operational anomalies to identify service and control risks.

**Data Architecture Integration and Platform Support**

You will coordinate data architecture and lineage practices with enterprise architecture, solution architecture, operations, analytics, and platform teams to improve transparency of data flows. You will maintain data ownership records, data definitions, data lineage, metadata, master data, and reference data to support traceability and accountability. You will also support resilient and auditable data pipelines across core banking, payment, switch, card, channel, reporting, and analytics environments.

**Data Protection, Regulatory, and Audit Compliance**

You will apply data protection, retention, privacy, and security requirements to data management activities to support responsible information use. You will support Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA), Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), South African Reserve Bank (SARB), Prudential Authority, National Payment System (NPS), Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), audit, and forensic evidence requirements through controlled extracts, lineage, and retained proof.

**Retail Banking Analytics and Decision Support**

You will enable trusted reporting for customer growth, account activity, deposits, balances, payment volumes, channel usage, fraud trends, failed transactions, reversals, complaints, operational incidents, and financial performance. You will partner with business and analytics teams to deliver dashboards, data marts, and insights that support retail banking performance and service improvement.

**Information Access Lifecycle and Security Control**

You will define data lifecycle controls for creation, use, storage, retention, archiving, and disposal of information assets to reduce data risk. You will review data access and usage practices to support appropriate handling of customer, account, payment, card, and operational information. You will also coordinate controls over privileged data access, data extraction, masking, encryption, and secure disposal to reduce exposure risk.

**Data Operating Model and Service Management**

You will define the data management operating model to clarify data ownership, stewardship, issue management, service levels, and escalation routines. You will maintain a data issue register with accountable owners, closure dates, risk ratings, and executive escalation for unresolved high-risk data issues. You will also establish data management service levels, issue resolution routines, control dashboards, and executive reporting to improve delivery discipline.

**Stakeholder, Vendor, and Service Coordination**

You will engage business, technology, finance, operations, risk, compliance, security, analytics, and audit stakeholders to clarify data management priorities and issues. You will coordinate vendor inputs where external service providers support data platforms, data processing, reporting, or data remediation activities. You will also provide specialist data management input into projects, system changes, service improvements, and operational reviews.

**Financial Management**

You will compile data management budget inputs and forecasts to support planned service delivery, data control, and remediation requirements. You will monitor data management expenditure against approved budgets to manage costs within allocated financial parameters. You will also review vendor cost drivers, support demand, data platform usage, and remediation effort to identify optimisation opportunities.

**People Management**

You will clarify role expectations, priorities, and standards for direct reports to align delivery with data management objectives. You will lead performance planning, review, and feedback processes to support accountability and delivery. You will also coach and mentor direct reports to build capability in data management.

**Qualifications and Experience**

We are seeking a candidate with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Management, Data Science, Statistics, Commerce, Finance Systems, or related discipline (NQF Level 7). You will also need a Certificate in Data Management, Data Governance, Data Quality, Database Management, Data Protection, or Information Technology Service Management (NQF Level 6). A minimum of 10 years of experience in the Information Technology industry and 8 years of experience in data management, data governance, data quality, database management, or data operations are required. Preferably, you will have a Postgraduate Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Management, Data Science, Statistics, Commerce, Finance Systems, or related discipline (NQF Level 8).