AI Data Architect

About the role

The Co-operative Bank is hiring a full-time, on-site AI Data Architect in Nairobi. The role is responsible for designing and maintaining the data architecture for AI initiatives, ensuring data quality and security, and supporting the integration of AI solutions into banking systems. It is a management-level position.

Key responsibilities

• Define the target architecture and transition roadmap for the bank's enterprise data platforms, including data warehouses, data lakes or lakehouses, real-time streaming capabilities, integration patterns and consumption layers.
• Design conceptual, logical and physical data models for priority data products, analytical solutions and AI use cases, with clear definitions, ownership and quality requirements.
• Define architecture patterns for data ingestion, storage, transformation, sharing, retention, archival and deletion across batch, streaming and real-time use cases.
• Partner with business data owners and Data Governance teams on definitions, metadata, lineage, master and reference data and authoritative sources.
• Guide Data Engineers in building scalable, reusable and governed data products, rationalising legacy data stores and defining migration approaches to the target platform.
• Ensure data designs include security classification, access control, privacy, segregation, encryption, retention, resilience and regulatory requirements, including compliance with the Data Protection Act, 2019.
• Review data solution designs and proposed source system changes, represent data architecture at the Architecture Review Board, document architecture decisions and ensure risks and technical debt have accountable owners and remediation plans.
• Maintain enterprise data models, data cataloguing requirements and architecture artefacts, and give technical guidance to delivery squads, Data Engineers, Data Scientists and other stakeholders.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Management, Engineering, Mathematics or a related field; a master's degree is an added advantage.
• At least 7 years of experience in data management, data engineering, database design, analytics or architecture, including at least 3 years in data architecture or a senior data modelling role.
• Demonstrated experience designing enterprise data models and modern analytical data platforms.
• Experience in banking, financial services or another regulated, data-intensive environment is preferred.

Required skills

• Data modelling (conceptual, logical and physical)
• Data warehousing, lakehouse, data lake and data product patterns
• Metadata, lineage, master and reference data, and data quality
• Batch, streaming and real-time data architecture
• SQL and relational and non-relational data technologies
• Privacy, security, records retention and resilience by design
• Data architecture governance and design review

Applications are made through the recruitment agency advertising the vacancy.