Senior Data Governance Specialist

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Data Governance Specialist to support SDG Client’s AI‑ready Data initiative, a strategic, multi‑year effort to strengthen our enterprise data foundation and enable scalable, trusted, and AI‑ready data across the organization.

This is a senior, hands‑on role focused on driving implementation and adoption of data governance practices across domains. You will work closely with Data Domain Owners, Data Stewards, architects, and senior stakeholders supporting strategically critical initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

· Lead the implementation and continuous improvement of data governance practices, ensuring data is managed, understood, and used in a consistent and responsible way across the organisation.

· Support Data Domain Owners and Data Stewards in defining, adopting, and operationalising data governance processes, including ownership, stewardship, data quality, and metadata management.

· Drive the definition and adoption of shared business terminology, data definitions, and conceptual structures, enabling a common language for critical business concepts.

· Define and operationalize governance workflows, escalation paths, and decision forums.

· Collaborate closely with business and technology teams to embed governance into real use cases, data products, and initiatives rather than treating it as a parallel activity.

· Actively contribute & lead the implementation and improvement of data governance tooling (e.g. data catalogues, metadata management, data quality tools), helping teams use them effectively.

· Lead improvements in data quality management, including expectations, controls, and monitoring for critical data.

· Oversee business glossary, semantic definitions, and governance alignment across domains.

· Ensure metadata, lineage, and governance artefacts are consistently maintained in data management tools.

· Identify gaps and opportunities to improve data management capabilities and drive incremental maturity improvements across domains.

· Act as a senior bridge between business, analytics, engineering, and architecture communities.

· Mentor junior governance practitioners and contribute to governance capability building.

Requirements

· Several years of experience in Data Governance or Data Management roles in large, federated organizations.

· Proven ability to work across business and technology, translating business needs into clear data definitions, standards, and governance artefacts.

· Hands‑on experience with, or strong understanding of, data governance and metadata tooling such as data catalogues, MDM, or data quality tools.

· Proven ability to implement governance frameworks pragmatically at scale.

· Deep understanding of data ownership, stewardship, data quality, metadata, and lineage.

· Strong stakeholder management, communication, and facilitation skills, with the ability to build trust and alignment.

· Experience defining and documenting guidelines, standards, and ways of working in a clear and pragmatic manner.

· Strong communication, facilitation, and pedagogic skills.

· Experience supporting analytics, data engineering, or platform teams.