Senior Data Engineer
Summary
A 5-month contract Senior Data Engineer role (hybrid, Johannesburg) building a greenfield healthcare data platform MVP for a medical scheme administration environment. Day to day: Snowflake data models, dbt transformations, Fivetran ingestion, automated data quality, CI/CD/DataOps and a Power BI reporting layer, with POPIA-compliant governance and knowledge transfer to Medscheme staff.
We are seeking an experienced Senior Data Engineer to join a high-impact greenfield data platform initiative within the healthcare and medical scheme administration environment.
This is a highly technical, delivery-focused role responsible for building the future-state MVP and establishing the foundational architecture, engineering standards and reusable patterns required to support the long-term scalability and automation of the data platform.
The successful candidate will be comfortable working independently, translating business and analytics requirements into robust technical solutions, and operating within a POPIA-sensitive health-data environment.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and build the future-state data platform MVP, including scalable data pipelines and transformation processes.
- Develop and implement automated data ingestion and integration patterns.
- Build robust and reusable Snowflake data models aligned to business and analytics requirements.
- Develop transformation workflows using dbt, applying modern analytics engineering practices.
- Implement data ingestion using Fivetran and establish reliable integration patterns.
- Design and implement automated data quality checks, testing and validation frameworks.
- Establish monitoring and controls to ensure data accuracy, reliability, availability and performance.
- Apply CI/CD practices across data and analytics engineering workflows.
- Implement and promote DataOps practices to improve automation, deployment, monitoring and operational reliability.
- Support migration from legacy reporting processes to the target-state data architecture.
- Establish reusable engineering standards, frameworks, patterns and documentation for future phases of the platform.
- Develop and support the Power BI reporting layer required for the MVP.
- Collaborate with business, analytics and technical stakeholders to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Ensure solutions are designed with appropriate security, governance, metadata management and POPIA considerations.
- Provide technical guidance and knowledge transfer to Medscheme staff, supporting the sustainable adoption of the new platform.
- Troubleshoot technical issues and continuously improve the performance, scalability and reliability of the data platform.
Required Technical Skills
- Snowflake
- dbt
- AWS
- Fivetran
- Power BI
- Advanced SQL
- Data modelling
- Modern data engineering
- Automated data quality and testing
- CI/CD for analytics engineering
- DataOps
- Metadata management
- Data integration and pipeline development
Important: Candidates should have direct, practical experience across the required modern cloud data engineering stack. Adjacent or theoretical exposure will not be sufficient.
Candidate Profile
We are looking for a self-sufficient Senior Data Engineer who can take ownership of the technical build and deliver outcomes with minimal supervision.
- Have strong senior-level experience in modern cloud data engineering.
- Be highly proficient across the Snowflake, dbt, AWS and Fivetran technology stack.
- Have experience designing and implementing scalable data platforms and pipelines.
- Understand modern DataOps, CI/CD and automated data quality practices.
- Be capable of developing reusable frameworks and engineering standards rather than one-off solutions.
- Be comfortable translating business and analytics requirements into technical solutions.
- Have strong data modelling and SQL capabilities.
- Be able to work independently in a delivery-focused environment.
- Have strong problem-solving and analytical capabilities.
- Be comfortable working with sensitive and regulated data.
- Understand the importance of data governance, security, quality and metadata management.
- Be able to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Have the ability and willingness to transfer knowledge to internal Medscheme teams.
- Be outcome-oriented and accountable for delivering agreed technical outcomes.
Key Deliverables
- Future-state data platform MVP
- Snowflake-based data models and pipelines
- Automated data ingestion and transformation processes
- Automated testing and data quality controls
- Monitoring and reliability mechanisms
- Foundational architecture for future platform phases
- Reusable data engineering standards, frameworks and patterns
- Power BI reporting layer supporting the MVP
- Documentation and knowledge transfer to internal teams
Environment
The role will operate within a healthcare / medical scheme administration environment, where data may include sensitive health-related information. Strong attention to data security, governance, privacy and regulatory requirements is therefore essential.
Experience working with POPIA-sensitive or other regulated data environments will be highly advantageous.
Contract Details
- Role: Senior Data Engineer
- Industry: Healthcare / Medical Scheme Administration
- Location: Waterfall, Midrand, Johannesburg
- Work Model: Hybrid
- Contract Duration: 5 months
- Start Date: 1 October 2026