Digital Analytics Engineer (Instrumentation)

Position Overview

• The Digital Analytics Engineer Instrumentation is a hands-on technical leader responsible for designing, implementing, and governing the end-to-end measurement infrastructure across Sanlam Fintech's digital products.
• This is primarily a Google Tag Manager GTM and Google Analytics 4 GA4 specialist role — bridging the gap between the business stakeholders who need reliable data and the engineering teams who build and maintain the digital platforms that produce it.
• At this level you will own the analytics tagging architecture, define event tracking standards, lead the adoption of server-side tagging, and mentor less experienced analysts and developers on measurement best practice.

What will you do?

Tag Management and Tracking Implementation

• Own and govern all Google Tag Manager GTM containers across web and mobile properties including workspace management, version control and deployment governance.
• Design and implement client-side and server-side GTM configurations including custom JavaScript variables, custom templates and Consent Mode v2 integrations.
• Implement and maintain GA4 event tracking aligned to a consistent organisational event schema including custom dimensions, custom metrics and ecommerce measurement.
• Instrument complex single page applications, micro frontend architectures and hybrid mobile web views where standard auto tracking is insufficient.
• Manage third party marketing and analytics pixels through GTM ensuring accurate conversion tracking and deduplication.

Measurement Strategy and Data Layer Architecture

• Define and maintain the organisation-wide data layer event taxonomy including naming conventions, event schemas and parameter standards for all product teams.
• Design scalable tagging architectures that are privacy-compliant, performant and resilient to platform changes.
• Develop and maintain a measurement planning process that translates business questions and KPIs into concrete tracking specifications before development begins.
• Lead the design of A/B testing and experimentation measurement frameworks ensuring experiments are tracked consistently and results are statistically sound.
• Evaluate and recommend analytics and tag management technologies as the market evolves.

Data Quality and Governance

• Proactively audit existing tracking implementations to identify gaps, duplication and data quality issues and own a prioritised tracking backlog.
• Build and maintain automated QA processes including pre launch validation checklists, regression test suites and post deploy monitoring dashboards.
• Write advanced SQL queries against GA4 BigQuery exports to validate event data, detect anomalies and produce data quality reports.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation including tagging specifications, data layer contracts, GTM container changelogs and measurement plans.

Reporting and Insights Enablement

• Build and maintain reporting dashboards in Looker Studio that surface actionable product and marketing insights for stakeholders.
• Partner with Data Engineering and Data Science teams to ensure analytics event data flows reliably into downstream pipelines.
• Translate complex measurement findings into clear non-technical narratives for product owners, marketers and senior leadership.

Privacy and Compliance

• Design and implement tracking architectures that comply with POPIA, GDPR and Sanlam's internal data governance policies.
• Own the integration between the Consent Management Platform and GTM ensuring tags fire only under the correct consent conditions using Consent Mode v2.
• Lead privacy-by-design reviews for new tracking implementations and advise product teams on data minimisation approaches.

Technical Leadership and Mentorship

• Define and drive best practices for event design, data layer architecture and tagging governance across the organisation.
• Provide technical mentorship to junior analytics specialists and front-end developers on tracking implementation, debugging and data quality standards.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives that raise overall measurement maturity through workshops, internal guides and championing a data quality culture.
• Represent the analytics engineering function in product squads, architecture reviews and vendor evaluations.

Qualification and Experience

• 8+ years of hands-on experience in digital analytics implementation, web analytics engineering or a closely related measurement discipline.
• Expert-level proficiency with Google Tag Manager including custom templates, JavaScript variables, server-side container configuration and Consent Mode v2.
• Expert-level knowledge of Google Analytics 4 including event and parameter configuration, exploration reports and BigQuery integration.
• Strong JavaScript skills with experience writing custom tracking code and debugging via browser developer tools.
• Solid understanding of web fundamentals including HTML, DOM structure, single-page application lifecycle and mobile web view constraints.
• Advanced SQL skills — comfortable querying GA4 event data in BigQuery or equivalent cloud data warehouses.
• Demonstrated experience designing and governing an organisation-wide event taxonomy and data layer standard.
• Practical experience with server-side tagging including GTM server container setup, custom clients and conversion API integrations.
• Strong understanding of privacy regulations POPIA, GDPR and experience implementing consent-aware tracking architectures.
• Experience leading technical initiatives, mentoring less experienced practitioners and influencing cross-functional teams.

Advantageous

• Google Analytics Individual Qualification GAIQ or Google Tag Manager certification.
• Experience with additional analytics platforms such as Adobe Analytics, Contentsquare, PostHog or Heap.
• Familiarity with CDP or event streaming tools and their integration with analytics pipelines.
• Exposure to A/B testing and feature flagging platforms.
• Experience in a regulated industry where data governance and audit trails are non-negotiable.
• Relevant degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Statistics or equivalent practical experience.

What will make you successful in this role?

• Measurement Rigour: You are obsessive about data quality. You know that a broken tag leads to a broken decision and you treat your tracking implementations with the same care as production code.
• Business Context: You connect every tracking implementation back to a business question. You can explain in plain language why a metric matters and what action it should drive.
• Privacy-First Mindset: You balance the need for rich behavioural data with genuine respect for user privacy and regulatory obligations.
• Systematic Debugger: You approach tracking issues methodically using browser dev tools, GTM Preview, GA4 DebugView and network request inspection to isolate root causes quickly.
• Cross-Functional Collaborator: You work comfortably across Product, Engineering, Marketing and Data Science teams. You write clear specs, run effective workshops and translate technical constraints for non-technical audiences.
• Automation Mindset: You invest in tooling and process including automated QA, documented standards and reusable GTM templates so the measurement ecosystem scales without becoming a manual bottleneck.

Knowledge and Skills

• Provides strategic input in building future, world class IT engineering technical capabilities
• Shapes the future IT landscape and leads the engineering transformation journey in the organisation
• Leads the efforts of developing engineering and management best practices, metrics and sound audit practices.
• Management and coaching of employees
• Industry trends and market changes