Cesairé Owen Tobias

Technology Strategy Consultant | Advisory & Technical Leadership

Cape Town | +27 76 278 3709 | | LinkedIn | GitHub

Professional Summary

Technology strategy consultant with over 11 years of experience spanning data science, analytics, and technical leadership. Background spanning from building analytical tools and data-driven solutions to advising senior leadership on technology strategy — including build vs. buy decisions, process design, and engineering team oversight. Working across finance, e-commerce, entertainment, and technology sectors.

Technical Skills

  • Leadership & Advisory: Technology Strategy, Build vs. Buy Analysis, Scope Management, Team Management, Technical Mentorship
  • Programming: R, SQL, Python
  • Business Intelligence: Tableau, Metabase, Power BI, Interactive Visualization, A/B Testing
  • Machine Learning: Supervised & Unsupervised Learning
  • Databases & Cloud: Google BigQuery, AWS Athena, PostgreSQL
  • Data Practices: Data Governance, Data Quality Standards, ETL Pipelines
  • Automation Platforms: Microsoft Power Platform, Power Automate
  • Strategic Analysis: Financial Modelling, Statistical Analysis, Monte Carlo Simulation, Scenario Analysis

Professional Experience

Founder & Principal Consultant | SheetSolved

September 2022 - Present (part-time alongside employment until January 2025; full-time thereafter)

Technology consultancy advising senior leadership on technology strategy, process design, and solution delivery.

Current Engagement: Consulting Technical Lead | Precise Digital

  • Advise the CTO on technology strategy, preparing build vs. buy analyses that weigh time-to-value against cost to inform executive decision-making.
  • Introduced version control and established coding standards, data governance practices, and quality assurance processes where none previously existed.
  • Draft scopes of work and manage delivery against them, engaging with leadership to prevent scope creep and keep engineering efforts aligned with business priorities.
  • Lead a team of 3 developers, overseeing architecture decisions, sprint planning, and mentoring team members through regular one-on-ones.

Additional Clients

  • Built a dashboard for BlueAlpha Investments that ingests, normalises, and aggregates spreadsheet data into a clean panel database for fund benchmarking and performance analysis.
  • Reviewed and enhanced valuation models for Gananda Connect.

Finance Project Analyst (Contract) | CDW, Cape Town

January 2024 - December 2024

  • Led cross-functional improvement initiatives within the CFO’s Tactical Solutions Team, collaborating with stakeholders across Finance, HR, and BI departments.
  • Designed and built Power Automate approval workflows that reduced processing time and eliminated manual bottlenecks.
  • Developed custom automated data aggregation solutions that consolidated information from multiple disparate sources, reducing hours spent on manual operations.

Senior Business Analyst | GoDaddy, Cape Town

April 2022 - December 2023

  • Designed, implemented, and analysed A/B experiments within the Mobile Ventures experimentation framework, applying statistical rigour to inform product strategy decisions.
  • Built interactive dashboards using Metabase and Tableau that enabled product managers to self-serve key performance metrics and track experiment outcomes.
  • Leveraged Google BigQuery and AWS Athena to analyse user behaviour patterns across platforms, translating insights into actionable recommendations that increased user engagement.

Business Development Analyst | Takealot, Cape Town

July 2021 - April 2022

  • Developed analytical models to assess new business opportunities across the Takealot Group (Takealot.com, Superbalist, Mr D).
  • Built business case frameworks for the on-demand grocery initiative and TakealotMORE subscription plan.
  • Performed benchmark analysis against international e-commerce leaders to identify feature gaps and growth opportunities.

Consultant | Fractal Value Advisors, Cape Town

August 2018 - July 2021

  • Built and maintained financial models for corporate valuation and strategic decision analysis.
  • Developed interactive dashboards using Excel and Power BI that visualized complex financial metrics for C-suite executives.
  • Created web-scraping tools that automated data collection, reducing research time and improving data accuracy.
  • Implemented scenario analysis and Monte Carlo simulations to stress-test strategic initiatives.

Ninety-One, Cape Town

Quantitative Analyst

January 2016 - August 2018

  • Helped build the analytics capability from the ground up for the global Emerging Market Fixed Income team spanning Cape Town, London, and Singapore.
  • Created R packages for data extraction and analysis that standardized reporting and established data quality practices across international teams.
  • Developed interactive Shiny applications that democratized complex analytics, enabling non-technical portfolio managers and analysts to self-serve insights.
  • Designed and implemented regression models to predict sovereign bond performance and recession risk, directly informing investment decisions.

Graduate Intern

January 2015 - December 2015

  • Rotated through Operations (Business Change team) and Investments (South African Rates team).
  • Assisted in econometric projects and operational process improvements.

Education

  • MPhil Financial Technology | University of Cape Town
    January 2024 - December 2025 (completed, dissertation results pending)

  • BBusSci (Economics) | University of Cape Town
    January 2010 - December 2014

    • 3rd Place, Allan Gray essay competition (2014)
    • 3rd Overall position, EDU Business Science 2010 cohort (2013)
    • 2nd Overall position, EDU Business Science 2010 cohort (2012)

  • National Senior Certificate | St. George’s Grammar School, Cape Town
    December 2009

Certifications

  • Certified Data Carpentries Instructor (June 2023)
  • AWS Partner Technical Accreditation (June 2021)
  • AWS Partner Business Accreditation (May 2021)
  • AWS Partner Cloud Economics Accreditation (May 2021)

Publications & Presentations

Publications

Presentations

  • Guest Lecturer, “The Economy and its Financial Markets,” Economics Honours, University of Cape Town (September 2019)
  • “Productivity hacks with your Rprofile,” SatRday Conference (2020): Watch Presentation
  • “Integrating Excel with R,” SatRday Conference (2019): Watch Presentation

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