Analytics Craft Lead

About the role

Our client, a fast-growing data and technology business, is looking for an Analytics Craft Lead to own the quality and growth of its analytics function. This role covers Business Intelligence, Data Analysis and Analytics Engineering.

You’ll set the standards, build Centres of Excellence and make sure analytics teams embedded across the business deliver high-quality work that solves the real business problem, not just the stated requirement. You’ll also own the full analytics talent lifecycle: hiring, onboarding, development and performance, in partnership with delivery leadership.

You’ll lead BI Analysts, Data Analysts and Analytics Engineers from junior to lead level, working in a tribe/squad/chapter model.

What you’ll do

• Set the craft standards. Define and maintain standards for modelling, coding, visualisation, documentation and version control, and make sure all analytics roles, including contractors, follow them.

• Own quality and business value. Introduce quality gates such as design reviews, code reviews and dataset certification. Make sure every piece of work starts from a clear business problem and is measured against its intended outcome.

• Build Centres of Excellence. Run CoEs and communities of practice for BI, Data Analysis and Analytics Engineering, and create reusable assets such as templates, certified datasets, semantic models and playbooks.

• Lead hiring and resourcing. Own recruitment for analytics roles, design technical assessments and balance the mix of permanent staff, contractors and consultancies.

• Onboard people well. Run a structured onboarding programme with 30/60/90-day plans and a buddy system, and ensure proper knowledge transfer when contractors leave.

• Grow the team. Build career paths and development plans, plan training and certifications, and support performance management and succession planning.

• Partner across the business. Work closely with the Chapter Lead, product owners, data engineering, data science and data governance teams.

What you’ll bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Statistics, Data Analytics or a related field

• 10+ years of experience in BI, data analytics and/or analytics engineering

• 5+ years leading analytics professionals, ideally across multiple teams in a matrix environment

• A track record of building analytics standards, frameworks, communities of practice or CoEs

• Hands-on depth in data analysis or analytics engineering, with solid working knowledge of the other areas

• Strong SQL and data modelling skills (dimensional modelling, semantic layers)

• Experience with BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik or SAP BusinessObjects

• Experience with modern data platforms and tooling such as SAP BW/4HANA, dbt, Azure, AWS or GCP, plus version control for analytics code

• Proven experience in recruitment, onboarding, performance management and career development of technical staff

• Experience managing contractors, consultants and vendors against standards and statements of work

Nice to have

• Honours, Master’s or MBA in Data Science, Business Analytics or a related field

• Certifications such as Microsoft Power BI / Fabric, dbt or cloud data platforms

• Experience in retail or healthcare

• Familiarity with Agile, data governance and data quality frameworks

• Exposure to AI/ML and GenAI in analytics and reporting

You’ll thrive here if you are

A credible technical leader who can review and challenge work across all three disciplines. You can influence senior stakeholders without direct authority, explain complex data simply, and coach people into future leaders. You stay composed in ambiguity and enjoy building structure in a high-growth environment.

Requirements

• South African citizenship

• Successful background, criminal record and credit checks