We Are Innovators & Category Creators
Clickatell, founded in Cape Town in 2000, was the first company to connect businesses with consumers via SMS using just four lines of code. Today, it powers AI-driven chat commerce for leading global brands across industries like banking, retail, telecoms, and healthcare — including Visa, ABSA, MTN, Toyota, and Pick n Pay. Over 25 years, Clickatell has led multiple industry firsts, such as tokenized WhatsApp payments, KYC chat banking, and Chat-2-Pay, through its award-winning AI Chat Commerce Platform that enables brands to interact and transact with customers seamlessly.
Purpose
As a Data Engineer, you will be joining our cross-functional data team, and supporting the design, build and testing of high-performance, scalable and multi-event level data solutions. You will work with structured, semi structured and unstructured data. You will play a critical role on the strengthen of our analytical presence in the Chat Commerce market. In this function you will be required to deliver production-ready data pipelines supporting key analytics or product use cases Improve the quality, reliability, or performance of existing pipelines Leave behind documented, supportable solutions aligned with Clickatell’s data standards. Reduce friction for analytics and downstream consumers through better-modelled, trusted data.
We Do The Right Things
Responsibilities of the Role
Data Pipeline Development
o Design, build, and optimize scalable batch and/or streaming pipelines across the data lifecycle (ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and exposure).
o Implement pipelines aligned to the Medallion / layered architecture (e.g., Bronze, Silver, Gold) to support analytics, reporting, and AI-ready data products.
Data Quality, Reliability & Observability
o Improve existing ETL/ELT processes to enhance data accuracy, completeness, freshness, and consistency.
o Implement data quality checks, validation rules, and monitoring to proactively identify and resolve data issues.
o Contribute to improving pipeline reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
Data Modeling & Analytics Enablement
o Collaborate with Analytics, BI, and Data Science stakeholders to design analytics-friendly data models (facts, dimensions, aggregates).
o Ensure data products are well-structured, documented, and consumable by downstream dashboards, APIs, and ML workflows.
Architecture & Standards Alignment
o Actively participate in solution design to ensure pipelines and data models align with data architecture principles, governance standards, and security requirements.
o Contribute to improving engineering patterns, reusable frameworks, and best practices across the Data Engineering team.
Collaboration & Delivery
o Work closely with cross-functional stakeholders (Product, Engineering, Analytics, Data Science) to translate business needs into reliable data solutions.
o Deliver clearly scoped outcomes within the contract period, including documentation and knowledge transfer.
Security & Compliance
We Are On A Learning Journey
Requirements of the Role
o National Diploma, B-Tech or bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or informatics.
Work Experience
o 3+ years of production data engineering experience
o 2+ years of experience working in cloud environments
o A background working in a high-volume payment transaction environment, or mobile technology platforms and systems integration would be advantageous and be able to demonstrate a sustained track record of delivering high-quality outputs, on-time and to product or business specifications.
o Exposure to Business Intelligence, data warehousing (dimensional modelling) will be advantageous.
o High transactional development environments and Business intelligence experience will be advantageous.
o Experience with data transformation tools such as Talend will be advantageous.
Knowledge and Abilities
o Excellent hands-on experience in working with SQL and NoSQL data sets
o Experience using GUI ETL tools
o Experience with data streaming architecture
o Working knowledge of DevOps principles such as CI/CD
o Self-disciplined, eager to help, and most importantly a thirst for continual learning
o Build on our coaching culture, you are someone who will not only be willing, but also passionate about assisting colleagues.
o Formal training business intelligence, data architecture or design would be advantageous
A Bit About You:
Behavioral competency requirements of a Pacesetter:
o Cultivating Talent: Actively drives the development of skills and strengths within the team, and recognizes achievements. Coaches the team on procedures, technical issues and priorities. Leads and contributes to a positive team environment with open communication and clear goals. Listens to team members’ feedback and resolves any issues or conflicts.
o Managing Resources: Manages resources optimally by making the right decisions that impacts how resources are used and for what benefit. Accurately estimates, forecast, projects, and monitors available levels of relevant resources and makes the right calls.
o Expert Exchanges: Seeks and communicates insights. Acts as access point for information within their team and throughout the organization, and ensures sharing of key learnings. Prepares and presents reports, and updates advising on performance and capacity.
o Risk Mitigation: Resolves problems that are relatively complex and drives decision-making processes. Systematically processes key factors when resolving conflict, managing risk, ensuring compliance and addressing quality concerns.
o Foster Teamwork: Builds relationships and influentially engages across teams to elevate performance. Facilitates brainstorming that delivers the best solutions. Encourages an inclusive culture where voices are heard and being open-minded is valued.
o Emotions and Performance: Puts effort into managing the link between emotions and performance that helps others do their best work by increasing self-awareness and reducing blind spots. Fosters a safe environment where others feel comfortable to take smart risks and build relationships.
o Drive Execution: Develops tactical plans that support the strategy and plans the detail of the projects, activities, and resources to deliver the goal.
o Coordinating Activity: Develops and manages processes conceptually and technically. Plans, monitors work, and accurately reads situations to course correct and ensure expectations are met.
o Navigating Change: Delivers change by bringing the team together, aligning their work and navigating them through the process. Stays on track by being optimistic and focusing on what is in their control. Executes by getting the right things done by the right people to deliver results.
o Driving Performance: Relentlessly reviews dashboards, systems, KPIs, procedures, and processes, and drives the team’s performance to incrementally improve results. Ensures processes are effective while aligning to best practice and increasing value.
Why You Should Join
Perks of the Role
Stronger Together
Clickatell is unequivocally committed to Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. We believe that we are stronger together and that sameness limits our thinking and our opportunities. You are welcome at Clickatell for who you are, no matter where you come from or what you choose to believe. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. But it isn’t just about a whole lot of different people working together all having their say – it is about us creating a place where we all feel that we belong. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world uses chat technology.
Clickatell is a leader in mobile messaging & transactions. Use our SMS gateway to connect to 1000+ networks in 220+ territories
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