Introduction Our client is looking for the following candidate to join the core Data Science and Engineering team within the Group IT Hub South Africa, contributing directly to the strategic Zero Trust Initiative.

This strategic transformation program establishes the future security architecture of the global IT landscape.

Operating as an expert-level Data Engineer and regional industry leader, you will design, build, and operate automated, AI-enabled operational data integration solutions that ingest, normalize, and stream security, identity, and workspace data to protect global business operations.

Event Streaming & Real-Time Pipelines: Deep technical mastery of Apache Kafka, schema registries, contract-first design (Avro, Protobuf), and API integration patterns to build high-throughput, real-time data movement solutions. Operational Data Engineering & Python: Advanced proficiency in Python for building idempotent streaming pipelines, data normalization across diverse sources (CMDB, identity systems, security tools), and query optimization for operational/OLTP workloads. Expert Technical Leadership & Resiliency: Serve as a best-practice industry leader capable of designing complex solutions based on international standards, solving escalated tasks with no senior authority to defer to, and leading team leads within a DevOps model.

Position Details:

Contract Dates: 01-08-2026 to 31-12-2028 Location: Midrand / Menlyn / Rosslyn / Home Office Rotation Level: Expert

Who This Role Would Suit:

This position is tailor-made for a master-level Principal Data Engineer or Streaming Systems Architect who excels at building real-time, event-driven data pipelines for enterprise security and identity ecosystems. It is an ideal match for an expert who prefers building operational, low-latency streaming infrastructure (ingesting live CMDB, identity, and security logs) over traditional static analytics data warehousing.

You are an authoritative, highly curious technical leader who thrives on solving complex, multi-system integration challenges with contract-first precision.

You bring a structured, detail-oriented approach to pipeline resilience, ensuring that real-time event feeds are idempotent, fully observable, and secure by design.

If you are ready to take global architectural ownership of data streams driving a premier global automotive group's Zero Trust transformation, this expert position provides a world-class platform.

Duties & Responsibilities Key Responsibilities:

Zero Trust Streaming Architecture: Design, build, and operate real-time operational pipelines ingesting data from Zero Trust sources (CMDB, identity systems, security tooling) into operational streams. Kafka & API Ecosystem Management: Build and maintain Kafka topics, producers/consumers, connectors, webhook listeners, and stream processing logic to capture operational events. Resilient Logic & Data Quality: Implement idempotent stream processing logic with retry/replay mechanics. Enforce automated data quality gates early in pipelines to block or quarantine bad data. Security & Performance Optimization: Apply least-privilege, secrets management, data masking, and encryption standards. Optimize partitioning, batching, and resource allocation to balance cost and throughput. DevOps Operational Ownership: Build testable pipelines using unit/integration/contract tests and CI/CD pipelines. Maintain pipeline alerting, runbooks, and participate in incident response/on-call rotations. Leadership & Guidance: Drive architectural decisions, define integration best practices, and provide technical guidance to team leads and lower-level engineers.

Important Application Details

Location & Relocation

Applicants based outside of Gauteng must be willing to relocate. Please note that relocation to the province will be at the candidate's own cost.

Eligibility & Legal

Citizenship: South African citizens and residents are preferred. Work Permits: Candidates with valid work permits will be considered. Privacy: By applying, you consent to being added to our database and receiving updates until you unsubscribe.

Application Status

If you do not receive a response within 2 weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful.

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Desired Experience & Qualification Qualifications & Experience:

Extensive hands-on experience (typically 6+ years) operating in data engineering, real-time integration, or event streaming roles with demonstrable production experience. Proven track record building and operating streaming platforms (Kafka) and API-based integrations. Strong proficiency in Python or Java alongside enterprise databases and query languages. Strong analytical thinking, structured problem solving, and an absolute ownership mindset to drive technical topics to completion.

Essential Skills & Technologies:

Real-Time Data Movement & Streaming:

Hands-on experience with Kafka and event streaming platforms for real-time operational data pipelines. Proven experience with API integration patterns, webhooks, and event/webhook ingestion listeners. Experience with schema registries and contract-first designs (Avro, Protobuf) to manage producer/consumer compatibility. Understanding of message delivery semantics, partitioning strategies, and capacity planning for high-throughput pipelines.

Data Engineering & Quality Governance:

Strong proficiency in Python for data engineering, ingestion pipelines, and automation. Solid competence with enterprise databases, query languages, performance tuning, and query optimization for OLTP workloads. Experience in data modeling, schema design, metadata management, cataloging, and data lineage tracking. Ability to normalize and correlate operational data across multiple security and identity sources. Design and operation of idempotent pipelines with retry, replay, backpressure, and compensation mechanisms.

Advantageous Skills:

Experience with Java for stream processing or custom connector development. Container orchestration (Kubernetes) and infrastructure automation (Terraform) for scalable stream processing. Knowledge of connector ecosystems and managed services (Kafka Connect, Confluent Cloud). Observability for streaming workloads using metrics, tracing, and logging stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry). Familiarity with NoSQL document stores (MongoDB), Azure Synapse, big data ecosystems (CDH/Hadoop), or enterprise SAP interfaces. Awareness of frontend frameworks (Angular) to better understand downstream data consumers.

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Expert Data Engineer_Zero Trust & Real-Time Event Streaming (Contract) - Gauteng/Hybrid - ISB903352

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