Who are we?
Sanlam was established as a life insurance company in South Africa but has since transformed into a diversified financial services group that operates across the African continent, India, Malaysia and selected developed markets, with listings on the Johannesburg, A2X and Namibian stock exchanges. In 2018 the Group celebrated its centenary as well as 20 years since demutualisation and listing in South Africa and Namibia. Sanlam is one of the largest internationally active insurance groups in the world with a presence in 31 countries and has the biggest non-banking financial services footprint on the African continent.
The Group's five business clusters (Sanlam Fintech x, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz and Santam) house the Group's business operations. The Group Office provides strategic direction and support to the five clusters, assisting them in realising their strategies and meeting their business objectives. The Group Office is responsible for governance and for the Group's centralised functions, which include: Finance, Actuarial and Risk Management, Strategy, Human Resources, Market Development and Sustainability.
Position Overview
The Senior Instrumentation Specialist I (SIS1) is a technical leader responsible for designing and implementing comprehensive measurement frameworks that enable data-driven decision making across Sanlam Fintech x's digital products. This role bridges the gap between business stakeholders who need insights and the technical systems that capture user behaviour, leading measurement strategy for significant product areas and providing technical guidance to less experienced specialists.
What will you do?
Measurement Framework Design & Architecture
- Design and implement comprehensive measurement frameworks for complex products.
- Architect enterprise data layer standards and handle complex multi platform requirements.
- Design TMS architecture and implement advanced features including custom templates and server side tagging.
- Define organization wide event taxonomy and governance standards.
- Design experimentation frameworks and A or B testing measurement approaches.
Technical Leadership & Best Practices
- Drive best practices in event design, data layer architecture and tracking governance.
- Take ownership of critical tracking infrastructure and ensure its reliability.
- Proactively identify and address tracking debt and data quality issues at scale.
- Lead evaluation of new analytics technologies and platforms.
- Design privacy compliant tracking architectures and lead compliance initiatives.
Stakeholder Engagement & Influence
- Work closely with product stakeholders to identify high impact measurement opportunities.
- Bridge the gap between Instrumentation and Data Science or Engineering teams.
- Influence the entire organization through technical leadership and evangelism.
- Make significant contributions to measurement strategy and technical decision making.
Mentorship & Team Development
- Provide technical mentorship to team members and help grow their capabilities.
- Guide less experienced specialists on debugging strategies, solution design and measurement best practices.
- Lead cross functional initiatives that raise measurement maturity across the organization.
Qualification and Experience
- 8+ years of experience in instrumentation, analytics engineering or a closely related measurement discipline.
- Demonstrated track record of designing and implementing measurement frameworks for complex digital products.
- Expert-level knowledge of web technologies including SPAs, shadow DOM, complex architectures and mobile web views.
- Advanced proficiency in JavaScript, DOM manipulation and custom tracking code development.
- Expert-level capability across multiple analytics platforms with custom implementations and API integrations.
- Advanced SQL skills with the ability to design validation frameworks and automate quality checks.
- Deep experience with tag management systems (e.g. GTM) including architecture design and server-side tagging.
- In-depth knowledge of Google GTM and Analytics platforms.
- Strong understanding of privacy regulations (POPIA, GDPR) and ability to design compliant tracking architectures.
- Experience leading technical initiatives and mentoring less experienced specialists.
- Relevant degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Statistics or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.
- Certifications in analytics platforms (e.g. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics) are advantageous.
- Experience with data layer standards across multiple product platforms.
- Exposure to data science workflows and experimentation methodologies.
What will make you successful in this role?
- Measurement Rigour: Obsessive about data quality, accuracy and completeness; understands that flawed tracking leads to flawed decisions.
- Business Context: Connects tracking implementations to business outcomes and prioritises measurement efforts based on decision-making needs.
- Privacy and Compliance: Takes user privacy seriously and balances the need for insights with ethical data collection practices.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Works effectively across Product, Engineering, Marketing and Data Science boundaries.
- Automation and Scalability: Focuses on building measurement infrastructure that scales and reduces dependency on manual work.
- Ability to develop systematic debugging approaches and create debugging tools and documentation.
- Skilled at identifying unstated requirements and designing comprehensive measurement frameworks.
- Capable of architecting measurement solutions for complex products with scalability in mind.
- Experience designing data quality frameworks and driving systematic quality improvement.
- Ability to align measurement strategy with business objectives and measure ROI of tracking investments.
Knowledge and Skills
Provides strategic input in building future, world class IT engineering technical capabilitiesShapes the future IT landscape and leads the engineering transformation journey in the organisationLeads the efforts of developing engineering and management best practices, metrics and sound audit practices.Management and coaching of employeesIndustry trends and market changes
Personal Attributes
Balances stakeholders - Contributing strategicallyBuilds effective teams - Contributing strategicallyManages complexity - Contributing strategicallyTech savvy - Contributing strategically
Build a successful career with us
We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth.
Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.
Core Competencies
Being resilient - Contributing strategicallyCollaborates - Contributing strategicallyCultivates innovation - Contributing strategicallyCustomer focus - Contributing strategicallyDrives results - Contributing strategically
Turnaround time
The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.
Our commitment to transformation
The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.
