Endeavour Recruitment has an excellent 5-month contract opportunity for a highly experienced Senior Data Governance Specialist to lead and implement best-in-class data governance frameworks, policies, and strategies for a global organisation.

This role is pivotal in ensuring data integrity, compliance, and usability while aligning data governance initiatives with business objectives.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in data governance, data management, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder engagement.

Key Responsibilities:

Current State and Gap Analysis for Data Governance:

• Assess current data governance maturity, including risk exposure, compliance gaps, and operational inefficiencies.
• Identify gaps, challenges, and opportunities by engaging with stakeholders across business and IT functions.
• Document key findings and provide actionable recommendations for improvement.

Create Data Governance Framework:

• Develop a structured data governance framework tailored to client's needs.
• Define key components such as data ownership, accountability, stewardship, and compliance requirements.
• Ensure integration with existing IT, security, privacy, and compliance frameworks.
• Provide governance around metadata management, data quality, and data lineage tracking, working closely with MDM and Data Catalog (metadata) consultants.
• Collaborate with data architecture and engineering teams to embed governance within data platforms and solutions.

Ensure Data Governance Augments Data Capabilities and AI/ML Readiness:

• Establish data governance processes that enable AI/ML adoption by ensuring data accessibility, trustworthiness, and ethical use.
• Implement policies to improve data discoverability, accessibility, and compliance for AI models.
• Work with data science and cybersecurity teams to ensure compliance, security, and ethical use of data.

Data Governance Strategy:

• Design a long-term strategy for data governance, ensuring alignment with business objectives and client's data strategy.
• Define roles and responsibilities for data governance stakeholders, including data stewards and custodians.
• Ensure the data governance strategy is aligned with client's data access, privacy, and security policies in collaboration with the cybersecurity team.
• Develop data quality monitoring and issue resolution strategies.

Data Governance Roadmap Aligning with the Strategy:

• Develop a detailed implementation roadmap for rolling out data governance initiatives.
• Prioritize short-term and long-term goals, focusing on high-impact areas.
• Establish a timeline, milestones, and key deliverables.
• Work with leadership and stakeholders to align the roadmap with business needs and AI strategy.

Produce at Least Two Data Governance-Related Policies/Guidelines Identified During the Gap Analysis Stage:

• Develop and implement a Data Quality Policy, outlining standards, controls, and responsibilities for ensuring high-quality data across the enterprise.
• Define governance practices to ensure AI/ML-readiness, including bias detection, model explainability, responsible AI principles, training data quality, and compliance with ethical AI standards and guidelines.
• Work with legal and compliance teams to ensure all policies meet regulatory and business requirements.

Training, Documentation, Communication, and Presentation:

• Develop and conduct data governance training programs for business and technical stakeholders.
• Create comprehensive documentation, including governance playbooks, guidelines, and best practices.
• Establish communication strategies to increase awareness and adoption of data governance initiatives.
• Present findings, recommendations, and progress reports to senior leadership and stakeholders.

Required Qualifications & Experience:

• Minimum 7 years of experience in data governance and management.
• Demonstrated experience in developing and executing enterprise-wide data governance strategies, policies, and roadmaps in large organizations.
• Strong knowledge of data governance, data quality, metadata, and master data management (MDM) standards.
• Proven expertise in data architecture and integration.
• Experience in cloud data governance (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and presentation skills.
• Proficient in English communicating.
• Ability to train and lead organizational change efforts in data governance.
• Bachelor's or master's degree in data management, Information Systems, Business, or a related field.
• Expertise in data governance frameworks such as DAMA DMBOK, DCAM, or EDM Council Standard

Please get in touch for further details on this excellent contract opportunity