Yamkela Mxaka
Data Scientist | BI Lead | Analytics Lead
eMalahleni (Witbank)
Summary
Senior Data Science & Analytics Leader with over 9 years of progressive experience delivering enterprise-scale Business Intelligence, advanced analytics, and applied data science solutions across mining, industrial, and fintech environments. Proven ability to transform fragmented, siloed operational data into trusted, governed, decision-ready intelligence that drives engineering reliability, operational efficiency, and measurable financial impact. Highly experienced in end-to-end analytics ownership — spanning business problem definition and stakeholder alignment, through data engineering, machine learning, forecasting, BI platform delivery, and executive-level insight communication. Recognised for leading organisations away from manual, reactive, spreadsheet-driven operations into scalable, proactive, analytics-led decision-making models.
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior BI Analyst | Data Scientist | Analytics Lead
Komatsu Mining Corp
06.2022 - Current
- Lead enterprise analytics, BI and data science initiatives supporting engineering reliability, maintenance, rebuild programmes, supply chain, warranty recovery and executive decision-making.
- Own full analytics delivery lifecycle from problem definition through data ingestion, modelling, analysis, visualisation and value realisation.
- Integrate and harmonise data across SAP, Salesforce, machine telemetry, service, warranty, rebuild and project systems into unified analytical models.
- Design enterprise analytical data models supporting BI, advanced analytics and machine learning use cases.
- Develop predictive maintenance, failure probability and forecasting models using Python.
- Deliver Power BI platforms used daily by operational teams, engineers and executive leadership.
- Lead data quality initiatives, KPI governance, metric standardisation and analytics adoption.
- Serve as analytics advisor to engineering, operations, finance, projects and leadership teams.
- Reduce investigation effort, reporting latency and manual work through automation.
Business Intelligence Analyst
Kazang Connect (Fintech)
08.2019 - 05.2022
- Delivered end-to-end business intelligence solutions for high-volume payment and transaction platforms.
- Analysed customer behaviour, acquisition, retention and transaction performance metrics.
- Designed and maintained analytical datasets using AWS Redshift and Snowflake.
- Built dashboards and operational reports in QuickSight to track volumes, processing times, failures and SLA performance.
- Partnered with product, operations and leadership teams to translate business questions into data models and insights.
- Standardised KPI definitions, reporting logic and data validation rules.
- Supported transition from ad-hoc reporting to structured, trusted BI platforms.
Business Systems Analyst
Computacenter UK
02.2017 - 07.2020
- Delivered business and systems analysis across multiple enterprise projects.
- Elicited requirements, documented processes and supported solution design and testing.
- Worked across SAP, Salesforce and AWS Lake Formation environments.
- Produced SQL-based datasets and Python analyses supporting operational and management decisions.
- Bridged business stakeholders and technical delivery teams.
Support Analyst
Computacenter UK
03.2015 - 01.2017
- Provided technical support and incident management within enterprise environments.
- Analysed incident, service and performance data to identify recurring issues and process improvements.
- Produced operational reports and trend analysis for management.
- Developed early exposure to enterprise systems, analytics and stakeholder engagement.
Education
MBA - Advanced Data Analytics
Nexford University
06-2027
Advanced Data Science Certificate - undefined
BrightLearn Institute
06-2026
Postgraduate Degree - Information Technology Management
MANCOSA
03-2025
Business & Data Analytics Certificate - undefined
University of Cape Town
10-2020
Bachelor of Commerce - Informatics
University of South Africa
06-2018
Skills
SQL
Python
Power BI
Excel (Power Query, Power Pivot)
Palantir(Foundry)
SAP
Salesforce
AWS
Snowflake
SQL Server
JIRA
Confluence
DAMA
PROFESSIONAL VALUE STATEMENT
- Enterprise BI & analytics transformation leadership
- Applied data science in operational, reliability and asset-intensive contexts
- Predictive maintenance, forecasting and trend analytics
- KPI frameworks, governance models and data quality leadership
- Strong bridge between engineering, operations, finance, IT and executive stakeholders
CORE CAPABILITIES
- Analytics Leadership & BI Strategy
- Enterprise BI vision, strategy, roadmaps and operating models
- Executive dashboards, board-level reporting and leadership analytics
- KPI definition, standardisation, ownership and performance frameworks
- Analytics governance, data trust enablement and adoption
- Data Science & Advanced Analytics
- Predictive maintenance and equipment failure modelling
- Time-series forecasting for rebuilds, materials and failures
- Statistical analysis, hypothesis testing and root cause analysis
- Feature engineering and machine learning model development
- Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
- Business Intelligence & Data Engineering
- SQL-based analytical data modelling (facts & dimensions)
- ETL / ELT pipeline design, optimisation and automation
- Power BI semantic models, datasets and enterprise reporting
- Self-service analytics enablement
- Enterprise Data Integration
- SAP – Finance, Procurement and Operations
- Salesforce – Service, Investigations and Customers
- Machine and equipment telemetry data
- Warranty, rebuild and project systems
- Cloud and on-premise data platforms
- Data Governance & Quality
- Data validation, cleansing and integrity frameworks
- Alignment with DAMA principles
- Audit-ready analytics and controlled KPI definitions
BUSINESS & ENGINEERING IMPACT
- 40–60% reduction in investigation effort
- Approximately 25% reduction in unplanned downtime
- Improved speed, quality and consistency of root cause analysis
- Enhanced rebuild cost control, scheduling accuracy and warranty recovery outcomes
- Increased executive confidence in analytics-driven decision-making
Timeline
Senior BI Analyst | Data Scientist | Analytics Lead
Komatsu Mining Corp
06.2022 - Current
Business Intelligence Analyst
Kazang Connect (Fintech)
08.2019 - 05.2022
Business Systems Analyst
Computacenter UK
02.2017 - 07.2020
Support Analyst
Computacenter UK
03.2015 - 01.2017
Advanced Data Science Certificate - undefined
BrightLearn Institute
Postgraduate Degree - Information Technology Management
MANCOSA
Business & Data Analytics Certificate - undefined
University of Cape Town
Bachelor of Commerce - Informatics
University of South Africa
MBA - Advanced Data Analytics
Nexford University