Head of Data

About the Company

Opareta builds the data infrastructure and physical distribution tools that mobile money agent networks across Africa run on. Our customers range from the continent's largest telcos and banks down to the individual agents, who are the last mile of financial inclusion in markets like Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Zambia. Years of transaction-level data across these networks have given us a moat that we're only beginning to turn into products.

About the Role

We're hiring a Head of Data to lead that next chapter. This is a foundational role: you'll inherit a small squad and a working stack, and you'll own the function end-to-end — strategy, architecture, hiring, and the data products themselves. You'll report directly to the CEO and Head of Product, with a seat at the table for commercial conversations, partner integrations, and roadmap decisions. Data is treated as a first-class function here, not a service desk.

What you will do

You'll need to operate at two registers: strategic (defining where the data function goes over the next two to three years) and hands-on (writing SQL, debugging pipelines, shipping dashboards) until the team you build can take more of the latter off your plate. We're a seed-stage company growing into something larger, which means real ambiguity, real constraints, and unusually high leverage on the decisions you make in your first year.

1. Strategic leadership:

   • Data Strategy & Roadmap: Lead evolution of our data-driven products and infrastructure (in collaboration with product and engineering leaders) with an eye for new products that we can uniquely bring to market because of our data moat

   • Architectural oversight for our data warehouse, ETL pipelines, and reporting layers as well as significant problem-solving on integrations with new partners

   • Organizational design: structure the team - you will identify additional key hires (e.g. data/analytics engineer or BI specialist) to complement your technical strengths

   • SLAs: Define and maintain data uptime, quality, and freshness

   • Ways of working: Establish the "Data Culture"—shaping how the rest of the business should expect to engage with you

   • Business Development: You’ll be integral to demos, pitches, and strategic conversations around contract negotiations

2. Day-to-day Execution:

   • Data wrangling: Hands-on execution within our stack across both cloud and on-premise environments.

   • Prioritize between different data requests and execute on these requirements - we have both internal users and external partners who rely on our data pipelines and our reporting flexibility for daily decisions

   • Planning:

     • Invest time in understanding new feature requirements

     • Research and de-risk complex requirements (testing, code spikes/tracer bullets)

     • Learn when to collaborate with the engineering and product functions

     • Triage technical escalations from support teams and direct from clients

     • Document and prioritize technical debt

   • Quality control and monitoring for data infrastructure

   • Performance Accountability: Establish a cadence for how the function sets goals, communicates with other functions, and executes against goals

   • Upskilling: You’ll spend time training clients as well as coaching internal teams on how to use reporting/any data-powered product to develop more data-driven decisions

What You Have

Must-haves:

• 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

Strong preferences:

• Experience working in or with developing markets at some point in your career

• Exposure to on-premise deployments (we have some; you can learn the rest on the job)

• Visualization depth in Tableau, Looker, or Superset for both internal and customer-facing use

Who You Are

• Highly self-aware of how others perceive you and where your strengths work to your advantage in work relationships

• A strong planner or project manager

• Direct communicator, comfortable making decisions with incomplete information

• Strategic thinker, with the ability to map deep technical expertise to business problems and commercial priorities

• High degree of personal accountability, someone who cares deeply about outcomes

Why join us

Our leadership team has an intense, team-sport mindset - for some people, that probably sounds like a turnoff, and that's ok.

We offer:

• 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

Our cultural values:

• Hustle - Don’t let effort stand in the way of achievement

• Vulnerability - Embrace risk-taking and mistake-making

• Collaboration - Uplift your teammates through collective responsibility

• Transcendence - Appreciate the opportunity to do something revolutionary

• Users first - Understand the user’s problems, goals, and perspective deeply