Head of Data

Talent Safari

Head of Data overseeing data strategy and product infrastructure at Opareta, a fintech startup in Africa. Leading hands-on execution while building a data-driven team.

Posted 5/18/2026full-timeKampala • 🇺🇬 UgandaLeadWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowAmazon RedshiftAWSBigQueryCloudETLGoogle Cloud PlatformKafkaPostgresPythonSQLTableau

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead evolution of our data-driven products and infrastructure.
Oversee architectural aspects for our data warehouse, ETL pipelines, and reporting layers.
Identify and structure the team with key hires to complement your strengths.
Define and maintain data uptime, quality, and freshness.
Establish the "Data Culture" and how the business engages with data.
Integral to demos, pitches, and strategic conversations around contract negotiations.
Hands-on execution within our tech stack across cloud and on-premise environments.
Triage technical escalations from support teams and clients.
Establish a cadence for how the function sets goals and communicates with other functions.

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years in data roles, with 3+ years leading a team
Expert SQL and Python
Deep experience with a modern data stack — ours is Kafka, Postgres/BigQuery/Redshift, Airflow, dbt, Superset, but the specific tools matter less than the depth
Cloud-native (we run a mix of GCP and AWS)
Experience building customer-facing data products, not just internal reporting
Comfort operating remotely with a distributed team
Experience working in or with developing markets at some point in your career (preferred)
Exposure to on-premise deployments (we have some; you can learn the rest on the job) (preferred)
Visualization depth in Tableau, Looker, or Superset for both internal and customer-facing use (preferred)

Benefits

Comp & perks

Huge variety of challenges and exposure to many markets across Africa.
Opportunity to work with the largest corporates on the continent (telcos and banks), all the way down to agents (sole proprietors and small businesses).
Opportunity to work on the financial inclusion of the last mile and to provide access to meaningful work for more women and those who otherwise could not participate in the formal economy

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

SQLPythonETLdata warehousedata qualitydata freshnessdata visualizationdata productscloud-nativeon-premise deployments

Soft Skills

leadershipteam buildingcommunicationstrategic thinkinggoal settingproblem solvingremote collaborationclient engagementtechnical escalation managementdata culture establishment