Head of Data

About the Company

The company is building a modern digital banking platform for emerging markets, helping partners launch financial products inside the channels their customers already use. Its approach is data-led, with data shaping everything from credit decisions and marketing segmentation to product performance and portfolio management.

The platform is organized into three main layers: an API integration layer for connecting partner systems, a module layer for configurable components that fit partner needs, and a services layer that supports financial product management such as portfolio oversight, scoring, and communications. This structure allows credit and savings products to be embedded into partner channels in a way that is convenient and highly contextual.

The solution is designed for a broad set of use cases. Mobile network operators can run efficient loan and savings systems tailored to their channels, fintechs can deliver customized financial services to their audiences, and banks can open new revenue streams and strengthen customer loyalty without rebuilding core systems. The business aims to expand access to financial services across emerging markets and become a trusted data source at scale.

Role Overview

As Head of Data, you will take ownership of the full data and AI platform, ensuring it evolves into a production-ready engine for intelligence, automated decisions, and continuously improving systems that support credit, payments, and embedded finance products. You will lead how data is collected, stored, processed, governed, and activated at scale while building a strong data organization.

This role sits at the center of long-term competitive advantage. You will be responsible for building a scalable data and AI foundation across trusted infrastructure, production predictive models, and self-learning systems that improve with every transaction, customer interaction, and partner integration.

Position Details

Title: Head of Data

Reports to: CEO

Coverage: UAE (HQ), Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and additional new markets

Base: The Oval, Parklands, Nairobi, Kenya

Travel: Required

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and Leadership

• Set and own the data and AI strategy, including the shift from rules-based approaches to machine-learning-led and self-learning decision systems.
• Build, coach, and scale a cross-functional data team spanning engineering, analytics, data science, architecture, machine learning, and BI.
• Create a high-performance environment with clear ownership, accountability, pace, and strong delivery standards across the data function.
• Be accountable for business outcomes where data and AI influence revenue, credit risk, portfolio quality, automation, and capital efficiency.
• Work closely with leadership and teams across product, risk, operations, finance, compliance, and growth to turn business goals into data needs and insights.
• Encourage company-wide adoption of data-driven working methods, including experimentation, analytics, and measurable performance tracking.
• Continuously assess new research, AI methods, and modeling techniques, and turn promising ideas into compliant, scalable production systems.
• Run a structured operating rhythm for the data function, including delivery reviews, model performance checks, portfolio analytics, and platform health reporting.

Data Infrastructure and Architecture

• Design and maintain a scalable data architecture and pipeline ecosystem capable of handling structured and unstructured inputs from partners, transactions, credit-scoring sources, customer activity, and operational systems.
• Ensure the reliability, security, quality, and compliance of all data flows and storage layers.
• Oversee ETL/ELT, warehousing, data-lake environments, and efficient access for analytics and decision-making.
• Own end-to-end operational integrity of pipelines from ingestion through transformation to analytics and live model consumption.
• Manage platform cost efficiency across compute, storage, and external vendors.

Analytics, Insights, and Data Products

• Provide dependable reporting, BI dashboards, self-serve tools, and analytics that support product performance, risk pricing, underwriting, customer behavior, growth, and operational KPIs.
• Partner with risk and credit-scoring teams to support real-time decisioning, including pricing, underwriting, and scoring workflows.
• Oversee the complete model lifecycle, including monitoring, drift detection, retraining, validation, and continuous improvement of live scoring systems.
• Move the organization from descriptive reporting toward predictive and prescriptive intelligence embedded into live workflows.

Data Governance, Compliance, and Best Practices

• Build and enforce data governance standards covering definitions, lineage, metadata, versioning, security, and access controls.
• Ensure data practices meet privacy and protection requirements across multiple emerging-market jurisdictions and remain auditable, secure, and ethical.
• Maintain a clear source-of-truth structure across critical datasets with strong documentation, traceability, and confidence for internal and external reporting.
• Support regulatory-grade reporting for banks and partners, including model performance evidence, audit trails, provenance, and lending-risk governance expectations.

Required Background

• A strong technical foundation with a degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a closely related field.
• Extensive hands-on work with big data, ETL/ELT, warehousing, data lakes, and both structured and unstructured datasets.
• Proven experience leading data or analytics teams, including hiring, mentoring, strategy setting, and delivering data capability at scale.
• Solid understanding of data architecture, data modeling, cloud-based data platforms, and scalable pipeline design.
• Strong commercial judgment, with the ability to connect data insights to product outcomes, credit and risk pricing, financial metrics, and growth priorities.
• At least 8 years of experience across data engineering, analytics, data architecture, and/or ML/AI, with ownership of production-grade models and decisioning platforms.
• Practical knowledge of modern tools and platforms such as Spark, Kafka, Airflow, DBT, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, Python, and SQL.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to senior and non-technical audiences.
• Deep experience building predictive models that influence product and operational decisions based on customer behavior.
• Experience implementing data governance, security controls, audits, and compliance practices in multi-market environments.
• A curious, detail-oriented, and proactive mindset, especially around governance, compliance, and ethical data use.

Preferred Experience

• Background in fintech, digital banking, embedded finance, or credit-risk and credit-scoring model environments.
• Familiarity with financial-services compliance or regulatory frameworks in emerging markets.
• Experience operating data systems across multiple regions with different legal and regulatory requirements.
• Ability to translate research-led ideas into practical solutions inside regulated financial settings.

What Success Looks Like

• Building the data backbone for a fast-scaling fintech infrastructure company and shaping how the business uses data to deliver embedded financial services.
• Enabling smarter automated risk and credit-scoring engines that support inclusion and scalable credit, savings, and payment products.
• Improving portfolio performance, credit-loss management, pricing accuracy, and capital allocation through analytics and decisioning systems.
• Equipping product, operations, risk, finance, and growth teams with reliable data to make better decisions.
• Creating and scaling a high-performing data team with strong governance and regulatory compliance across markets.
• Developing an AI-enabled data platform that compounds over time and strengthens the company’s products, partnerships, and market position.

Culture

The company describes itself as a fast-moving, high-performing team focused on building the future of banking and widening access to finance across emerging markets. The team works across offices in Dubai, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Maputo, and Porto, and regular travel is part of how collaboration is strengthened.

While remote work can be arranged in specific situations, the culture strongly favors in-person collaboration and being physically present as a team. The organization is in a hyper-growth phase, expanding into new markets and evolving its structure, and it is looking for energetic, curious people who want to help create value and drive innovation.

Benefits

• Health insurance for you and your direct dependants.
• Group bonus policy.
• Long-term incentive plan (LTIP).
• Mental health and wellbeing platform.
• Learning and development opportunities, both internal and external.

Additional Information

This role is based in Nairobi, Kenya, with coverage across UAE (headquarters), Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and other expanding markets. Travel is required. Work-from-home may be available in specific situations, but the role is positioned as largely in-person and collaborative.