DS & BI Lead Connected Brewer

We Go Places! How about you?

Immediate Superior: Manager AI Development
Location: Stellenboch, Western Cape
Function: Digital & Technology
Sub Function: Data Science Commerce
Type of Contract: Permanent
Reference Number: ​​​164818
Closing Date: 30/09/2026

As a DS-BI Lead within HEINEKEN’s D&A Product Organisation, you are responsible for leading the DS/BI Development / Advanced Analytics capabilities within the Smart Brewery ecosystem.

Embedded within the D&A Product, you work closely with Product Leads, Business Analysts, Data Engineers, and Developers to ensure the delivery of high-quality, scalable analytical products and advanced analytics solutions. You act as the technical and capability lead for BI Developers and Data Scientists, guiding how data is transformed into actionable insights, robust dashboards, and advanced analytical models.

You play a key role in shaping standards, best practices, and ways of working across analytics and data science, ensuring consistency, scalability, and business value delivery at global scale.

A key part of your role is reinforcing Agile Ways of Working, supporting squads with expertise, enabling high-quality delivery, and driving continuous improvement across these capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

1. Capability Leadership & Strategy

• Define and evolve the DA/BI Development and Data Science / Advanced Analytics capability vision within
• the D&A Product together with the D&A Product Owner and Product Leads
• Establish and promote best practices for data modelling, dashboarding, and advanced analytics.
• Drive standardisation and reuse of global analytical assets, KPIs, and models.
• Ensure alignment with the D&A roadmap and Smart Brewery vision.
• Identify opportunities to leverage advanced analytics and data science to unlock business value.

2. Product Discovery & Requirements

• Provide guidance on translating business and analytical needs into data models, KPIs, dashboards, and advanced analytical use cases.
• Support feasibility assessments for new use cases, including data availability, modelling complexity, and analytical approach.
• Collaborate with Product Leads and Business Analysts to shape a clear, prioritised analytical backlog.
• Bring structure and technical insight to complex analytical and data science challenges.

3. Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as a key partner for Product Leads and stakeholders on analytics and data science topics.
• Translate complex analytical outputs into clear, actionable insights for business users.
• Facilitate alignment on KPIs, modelling logic, and analytical approaches across squads and regions.
• Act as the voice of DA/BI and Data Science, ensuring solutions deliver meaningful business value.

4. Data & Analytics Enablement

• Guide the design and development of scalable dashboards, semantic models, and analytical datasets (DA/BI domain).
• Ensure consistency in data modelling, KPI definitions, and visualisation standards across products.
• Drive adoption of advanced analytics techniques, including statistical analysis and machine learning.
• Collaborate with Data Engineers to address data quality, availability, and structural gaps.
• Promote reuse of analytical components to enable global scalability.

5. Product Delivery & Value Realisation

• Provide expert support and direction to squads during development and delivery.
• Ensure DA/BI and data science solutions meet quality, performance, and scalability standards.
• Support testing, validation, and monitoring of dashboards, datasets, and models.
• Ensure analytical products are delivering measurable business value across breweries.

6. Supporting Agile Ways of Working

• Support teams in breaking down DA/BI and data science work into clear, testable backlog items.
• Ensure analytical work meets the Definition of Ready before sprint commitment.
• Actively contribute to Agile ceremonies:
  • Sprint Planning: provide analytical and technical guidance
  • Refinement: structure modelling, KPIs, and data science approaches
  • Daily Collaboration: support realtime problem solving
  • Reviews: validate outputs and showcase analytical value
  • Retrospectives: drive capability and delivery improvements
• Promote iterative, data-driven delivery — start small, validate early, learn fast.

7. Change & Adoption

• Ensure DA/BI and data science solutions are understood, adopted, and delivering value.
• Support documentation, training, and deployment of dashboards, models, and advanced analytics use cases.
• Promote a data-driven mindset across stakeholders and brewery teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Science, Analytics, Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• Strong experience in Agile/Scrum environments; Agile certifications are a plus.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Strong experience in DA/BI Development and/or Data Science (typically 5+ years).
• Proven experience leading or mentoring DA/BI Developers and/or Data Scientists.
• Expertise in BI tools (Power BI, Grafana), including semantic modelling and KPI design.
• Strong SQL skills and understanding of analytical data modelling.
• Experience with data science tools and languages (e.g., Python, R) and advanced analytics techniques.
• Strong understanding of the end-to-end analytics lifecycle.
• Ability to translate business challenges into analytical and data science solutions.
• Experience working in global, cross-cultural environments.
• Fluent English (written & spoken).

Desirable

• Experience in manufacturing, FMCG, or industrial analytics.
• Exposure to OT/IT data (MES, SCADA, sensors).
• Familiarity with Azure analytics ecosystem (ADF, Synapse, Databricks).
• Experience operationalising machine learning models in production environments.

Mindset & Behaviours

Aligned to HEINEKEN Behaviours:

Focus on value — ensuring analytics and data science deliver measurable impact.
Empower teams — enabling DA/BI Developers and Data Scientists to succeed.
Start quick, learn fast — experimenting, validating, and improving continuously.
Continuously improve — driving excellence in DA/BI and data science practices.

You thrive at the intersection of data, analytics, and business, enabling teams to turn data into actionable insights and scalable solutions that make breweries smarter and more efficient.

The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply. Heineken Beverages (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd) is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates and values inclusion and diversity. You must be fully eligible to live and work in South Africa to apply.