Finance Data Specialist

Job Title Finance Data Specialist Location Rosebank - Johannesburg, 2196 ZA (Primary)

Occupational Level Professional Job Category Finance Job Type Permanent Description PayInc is a purpose-driven payments provider building on over 50 years of trusted history in South Africa’s payments ecosystem. Our mission is to connect people, businesses, and economies through secure, efficient and inclusive digital payments infrastructure and be a catalyst for financial inclusion and economic growth. From EFTs and cards to PayShap, PayInc provides the backbone that enables money to move safely across the economy. At our core, we exist to make great connections, empowering participation, enabling growth, and ensuring no one is left behind.

PURPOSE

The Finance Data Specialist is responsible for establishing and maintaining strong master data governance across Finance and related enterprise processes. The role ensures that master data is accurate, consistent, controlled and fit for purpose across key systems by managing data standards, lifecycle activities, change control, reconciliation and audit readiness. The position also supports process improvement, reporting enablement and business capability development through close collaboration with Technology, Finance Operations, Procurement, Risk and other relevant stakeholders.

You will engage with the following stakeholders:

• Executive Management
• CRM, Product owners
• Data Warehouse/Data Lakehouse Technical production teams
• Internal clients such Finance Operations, FP&A and Procurement and other Bus as necessary
• Data stewards
• Bank clients and regulators (where required)
• Service providers & vendors
• Internal development teams
• Information Security
• Risk and Compliance
• Enterprise Architecture
• Data Management teams (Data Warehousing, Data Engineering, Business Intelligence)

Your key responsibilities include:

Own master data governance and enterprise MDM framework

• Manage the creation, maintenance and closure/offboarding of key master data.
• Develop, maintain and continuously improve the enterprise Master Data Management framework.
• Establish authoritative master data sources and systems of record across the organisation.
• Define and manage master data domains, including supplier, item, contract, vendor, customer, merchant, product, participant bank, service provider, employee, chart of accounts and dimensions.
• Develop master data lifecycle processes covering creation, maintenance, approval, modification, retirement and offboarding.
• Maintain data standards, definitions and controls across the relevant master data domains.

Protect data integrity across systems

• Ensure alignment and consistency between source systems, ERP, reporting/planning systems, banking platforms and other operational platforms.
• Identify and resolve reconciliation breaks across the general ledger, subledger, banking, product and reporting environments.
• Support the maintenance of a single, trusted source of truth across systems through standardised master data structures and controlled data flows.

Maintain control structures and audit trail

• Establish and implement formal governance and change control processes for master data creation, modification, approval, reconciliation and retirement.
• Define enterprise data standards, policies, governance requirements and quality controls to operationalise the master data operating model.
• Define master data standards, policies, controls, procedures and service level agreements.
• Track approval processes and service level agreements for master data changes.
• Maintain version history and a complete audit trail for all approved data changes.
• Facilitate Master Data Governance Forums and Working Groups to support decision-making, issue resolution and accountability.
• Support audit readiness and reduce the risk of control failures across master data processes.

Improve data quality

• Define and implement master data quality rules, validation criteria and monitoring controls.
• Develop data integrity KPIs and reports to monitor master data control effectiveness, quality trends and remediation progress.
• Establish data quality scorecards, KPIs and reporting to monitor data quality trends and remediation activities.
• Identify and eliminate duplicate records across key master data sets.
• Improve completeness, accuracy, consistency, timeliness, uniqueness, validity and standardisation of master data records.
• Drive root cause analysis for recurring data quality issues and coordinate remediation with business and technical teams.
• Apply recognised standards, such as UNSPSC, where relevant to the data domain.
• Support the maintenance of a single, trusted source of truth across systems.

Enable data stewardship, ownership and MDM technology

• Work closely with Business Data Stewards to embed ownership and accountability for critical data assets.
• Define the interaction model between the Centralised Data Capability and Business Units, including ongoing data stewardship, coordination and escalation processes.
• Define and obtain sign-off on data maintenance roles and responsibilities across Central and Business Unit teams.
• Define stewardship responsibilities, decision rights and RACI structures across relevant master data domains.
• Assist business areas in resolving master data issues, exceptions, ownership gaps and process breakdowns.
• Support the implementation, administration and enhancement of Master Data Management solutions.
• Collaborate with Data Architects, Data Engineers and Technology teams on data integration, data synchronisation, API interfaces and platform dependencies.
• Support golden record management, survivorship rules, match-and-merge capabilities and alignment of data across systems.
• Assist in evaluating MDM technologies, vendors and solution options to improve control, scalability and reporting enablement.

Support reporting enablement, metadata and data lineage

• Help ensure clean, reconciled and structured data is available for dashboards and reporting.
• Enable drill-down capability to transaction level for reporting and analysis purposes.
• Support finance teams with reliable data for profitability, revenue, activity-based costing and scenario analysis.
• Maintain business glossaries, master data definitions, data ownership records and domain documentation.
• Document data lineage, system dependencies and data flows to support transparency, control and issue resolution.
• Ensure appropriate metadata management practices are applied across master data domains.

Build business capability and support regulatory compliance

• Document structures, dependencies and governance processes.
• Train data stewards or functional users where needed.
• Act as subject matter expert for data governance initiatives and provide guidance to business stakeholders on master data practices.
• Support compliance with POPIA, the Companies Act, National Payment System requirements, internal data management standards and information security policies.
• Assist with regulatory, audit and assurance requests relating to master data, systems of record, control evidence and data ownership.

Qualifications / Knowledge

• NQF Level 7 or higher qualification in any one of the following:
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Science
  • Engineering
  • Data Science
  • Data Management
  • Business Analytics
  • Related discipline
• Banking, payment and card knowledge advantageous
• Advantageous skills/knowledge:
  • DAMA CDMP
  • DCAM Certification
  • Information Governance Certification
  • Data Quality Certification

EXPERIENCE

Essential

• 8+ years’ experience in Data Management, Data Governance, MDM, Information Management, or Data Quality.
• Experience implementing enterprise data governance practices.
• Experience defining data standards and business glossaries.
• Experience working wit