AI / ML Big Data Lead at Vodafone, Johannesburg, South Africa

Use their knowledge of ML/AI and combine it with programming and software engineering skills to enable easier use of and access to the Group unified datalake, AI and ML technology stack to enable the development, deployment and operation of AI/ML models and related data & analytics.
Work closely with the Group International Markets Data Science team, Local markets IT and Commercial stakeholders to enable Cloud Data Lakehouse capabilities that enable and ease the AI/ML model and analytics development, deployment, and operations.
Lead and shape the team of Software Engineers, ML Engineers, and DevOps Engineers in the Group AI / ML and Big data cloud capability design, development, deployment and operations.
Enable and support the Group International Business (IB) Data Science Team, IB markets and Group functions in deriving business value from the Group AI / ML and Big Data cloud big data unified platform.

Your responsibilities will include:

Lead and shape the design and develop AI / ML systems and capabilities.
Lead and shape the Cloud Big Data application and infrastructure DevOps design, development, and deployment of standardised and repeatable patterns.
Drive the automation of AI / ML predictive model software, including model training.
Enable the automation and productionisation of data science prototypes through configure driven capabilities and develop ML apps according to data science requirements.
Ensure streamline, secure and digitised flow of data in the Group unified lakehouse to enable effective AI / ML model execution and delivery, and secure ML outcomes in real-time or batch to the IB markets systems of engagement.
Drive the overall Cloud Big Data architecture and solution design to evolve the Group cloud big data capabilities (reusable assets/patterns) and components to support the business requirements/objectives.
Stay abreast with latest trends and research of AI / ML and cloud big data technologies and methods to improve delivery and sustainability of big data, AI / ML applications and services.
Make contributions to the process of defining best practice for the agile development of applications to run on the Group cloud big data platform.

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

Must have technical / professional qualifications:

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

Experience managing the development life cycle for agile software development projects.
Robust software engineering, DevOps engineering and AI/ML engineering skills and expertise.
Experience in using a wide range for data tools such as AWS services – S3, SFTP, Glue, EMR (Spark), Step Functions, Athena, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, KMS, SageMaker, Kinesis, OpenSearch, etc.
Knowledge of Big Data frameworks like Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Yarn, Airflow, etc.
Experience in working with distributed ML frameworks like H2O and/or TensorFlow

Experience in working with various ML libraries with key focus on AWS Sagemaker
Programming experience in Java, Python is essential
Experience working containerisation services such as Docker/Kubernetes or cloud alternatives would be an advantage
Experience with AWS big data lakehouse architecture & analytics is essential, while working knowledge of GCP would be desirable.
Experience with other distributed technologies, NoSQL databases and streaming technologies would be desirable.
Strong written and verbal communications
Excellent interpersonal and collaboration skills.