Purpose of the Role The Implementation Specialist Customer Data Platform & CIAM is accountable for the end-to-end delivery of SPAR’s SAP Customer Data Platform (SAP CDP) and SAP Customer Data Cloud (SAP CDC) capabilities, establishing a trusted, unified customer data foundation that powers personalisation, loyalty, marketing activation, and compliant data stewardship across all brands and channels. The role sits at the intersection of data engineering, identity management, regulatory compliance, and customer experience. The specialist brings deep SAP CDP product expertise and the complementary CIAM knowledge to ensure that every customer touchpoint from digital front-door authentication through to real-time profile activation is accurate, consented, secure, and regulation-ready. Working in an automation-first, configuration-as-code discipline, the specialist drives repeatable, auditable delivery at enterprise scale, collaborating closely with architectural and technology leadership in a manner consistent with The SPAR Group’s principles and values. 2. Context & Strategic Importance SAP CDP is SPAR’s central customer intelligence platform the single source of truth that unifies behavioural, transactional, and preference data into real-time, actionable profiles. SAP CDC is the identity and consent layer that governs how customers authenticate, what they consent to, and how their preferences propagate across brands. Together they form the backbone of SPAR’s digital customer strategy, enabling: Personalised engagement across loyalty, rewards, and marketing automation Compliant data stewardship under PoPIA, PAIA, ECTA, and associated codes of practice Scalable, real-time and near-real-time data processing across high-volume omnichannel environments Trusted ecommerce and digital commerce experiences anchored in verified, consented identity 3. Key Responsibilities 3.1. Primary Mandate: SAP CDP Implementation Own the full implementation lifecycle of SAP CDP from source onboarding through profile unification to downstream activation. Define and maintain data contracts, semantic models, and attribute taxonomies aligned to enterprise data strategy. Design and implement identity resolution logic, including deterministic and probabilistic matching rules, deduplication, and golden record management. Orchestrate source system onboarding: transactional, behavioural, loyalty, ecommerce, and third-party data feeds. Configure real-time and near-real-time data pipelines and streaming integrations to support time-sensitive activation and decisioning. Ensure profile data is enriched, validated, and reconciled continuously; define data quality KPIs and automated monitoring rules. Decompose the CDP roadmap into sprint-ready, dependency-sequenced work packages with measurable acceptance criteria. Maintain full delivery transparency via structured artefacts: data dictionaries, integration specifications, runbooks, deployment checklists, and go-live readiness gates. 3.2. Secondary Mandate: SAP CDC Implementation Implement SAP CDC as the digital front door: customer registration, social login, progressive profiling, MFA, and session management. Design and configure consent and preference management flows that are legally valid, brand-consistent, and operationally maintainable. Ensure consent events propagate in real time to SAP CDP and downstream marketing/activation platforms. Coordinate identity and consent design with solution and domain architects; translate target-state architecture into executable delivery tasks. Produce configuration records, schema registries, and environment-readiness checklists to support repeatable releases and operational handover. 3.3. Data Controls, Regulatory Compliance Apply expertise in South African and applicable international data protection legislation: Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPIA) lawful basis, data subject rights, information officer obligations Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) access requests, manual and automated fulfilment Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA) electronic consent, digital signatures, spam obligations King IV governance principles Design and enforce data-at-rest and data-in-transit controls: encryption standards, tokenisation, masking, and access governance. Implement consent lifecycle management: capture, versioning, withdrawal, and audit trail integrity. Define and embed data retention, purge, and suppression automation into platform configuration. Maintain traceability matrices linking regulatory requirements to implemented controls; support internal and external audit readiness. Collaborate with the Information Officer, Legal, and Risk teams to translate regulatory obligations into platform-level controls. 3.4. Customer Engagement – Loyalty, Rewards, and Marketing Automation Configure SAP CDP segments, calculated attributes, and audience activation pipelines to serve loyalty and rewards programmes. Integrate CDP activation with marketing automation platforms (SAP Emarsys) ensuring real-time segment refresh and suppression. Support personalisation use cases: next-best-action, offer targeting, basket analysis, and lifecycle marketing triggers. Define and instrument event schemas for behavioural tracking (web, app, in-store) to enrich customer profiles and drive automated journeys. 3.5. Automation-First Delivery & Configuration-as-Code Champion an automation-first philosophy: infrastructure-as-code, configuration-as-code, and pipeline-as-code practices across all platform components. Use CI/CD tooling (e.g. GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or equivalent) to automate deployment, testing, and environment promotion for SAP CDP and SAP CDC configurations. Implement automated data quality checks, schema validation, and contract testing within the delivery pipeline. Build self-service runbooks and auto-remediation scripts to reduce operational toil and accelerate incident resolution. Apply GitOps principles to configuration management: version-controlled, peer-reviewed, and auditable changes only. 3.6. Architecture Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement Engage confidently with solution architects, domain architects, and enterprise architects to validate design decisions and surface implementation constraints early. Communicate effectively with neurodiverse architectural and technology leadership structuring engagements with clarity, written pre-reads, visual artefacts, and defined decision frameworks aligned to inclusion principles. Translate high-level architecture blueprints into detailed, task-level delivery plans; surface risks, assumptions, and dependencies proactively. Facilitate cross-functional working sessions with integration teams, security, risk, legal, and business stakeholders. Represent delivery progress at governance forums; maintain a current and honest picture of scope, velocity, and risk. 3.7. Operational Readiness & Knowledge Transfer Define and deliver operational handover packs: monitoring playbooks, alerting thresholds, support runbooks, and escalation paths. Establish observability patterns for platform health: data pipeline latency, profile freshness, consent propagation lag, and identity resolution accuracy. Coach and upskill internal teams on SAP CDP/CDC configuration, data stewardship practices, and compliance obligations. Maintain a living body of implementation knowledge decision logs, architecture decision records (ADRs), and lessons-learned artefacts. 4. Required Competencies and Experience 4.1. Technical Expertise Domain Required Proficiency SAP CDP Deep hands-on implementation experience; data modelling, identity resolution, activation, API configuration SAP CDC / CIAM Proficient; consent flows, social federation, MFA, schema design, preference management Data Compliance (PoPIA/PAIA/ECTA) Expert; able to translate legislative obligations into platform controls and audit-ready artefacts Real-time Data Processing Proficient; event-driven architectures, data streaming, CDC and CDP patterns, low-latency pipelines CI/CD & Automation Proficient; GitHub Actions / Azure DevOps, IaC concepts, configuration-as-code, automated testing Data Quality & Governance Proficient; data contracts, schema registries, quality KPIs, lineage tooling Loyalty & Marketing Platforms Working knowledge of loyalty/rewards programme data flows and marketing automation integration Ecommerce Platforms Familiarity with ecommerce data models and checkout/browse event instrumentation Security & Encryption Working knowledge of encryption at rest/in transit, tokenisation, RBAC/ABAC, OAuth 2.0 / OIDC 4.3. Qualifications & Experience Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Engineering, or equivalent practical experience 5 years in data platform or integration implementation roles, with at least 2 years on CDP or CIAM platforms Demonstrable hands-on experience with SAP Customer Data Platform (SAP CDP) mandatory SAP CDC / Gigya implementation experience strongly preferred Working knowledge of South African data protection legislation (PoPIA, PAIA, ECTA) mandatory SAP certifications in Customer Data solutions advantageous
