SAP Data Governance & MDM Lead

The role

• Our client is building a data governance program from the ground up, and we need the person who will make it real. You will stand up the operating model and the organization behind it: who decides, who stewards, which policies apply, how quality gets measured, and how master data stays clean once it is fixed.
• The job is roughly two-thirds organizational and one-third technical. Most governance programs stall on adoption, not tooling, so we want someone who has gotten business owners to show up to a council meeting and keep showing up.

What you will do

• Program standup: Assess current maturity, then write the governance charter, scope, roadmap, and success measures with the client's executive sponsor.
• Operating model: Design the governance structure (centralized, federated, or hybrid), stand up the executive steering committee and data governance council, and set their cadence, decision rights, and escalation paths.
• Roles and accountability: Define data owner, data steward, and data custodian roles; build the RACI; and help the client identify, onboard, and train the people who fill them.
• Policies and standards: Draft and gain approval for data governance policy, data quality standards, metadata standards, and data retention and classification guidelines, aligned with the client's privacy and compliance obligations.
• Business glossary and critical data elements: Lead the identification of critical data elements for priority domains and drive definitions, ownership, and approval workflow in the glossary.
• Data quality management: Define quality dimensions (completeness, accuracy, validity, consistency, timeliness, uniqueness), write measurable rules for critical data elements, stand up scorecards, and run an issue-management process with root-cause tracking.
• Master data management: Define MDM strategy for priority domains such as customer, supplier, material/product, or chart of accounts. Lead match-and-merge rules, survivorship logic, golden-record design, and the stewardship workflow for exceptions.
• Metadata and lineage: Guide configuration of the catalog and lineage tooling so stewards and analysts can find, trust, and trace data.
• Change management and communication: Build the training, communication plan, and adoption metrics that move governance from a document to daily practice.
• Reporting: Report program health, quality trends, and decisions to the steering committee each cycle.

What you bring (required)

• 8+ years in data management, with at least 4 years leading data governance, data quality, or MDM work.
• Led at least one governance program from inception: charter, council, stewardship model, and policies, not only tool implementation.
• Fluency in DAMA-DMBOK knowledge areas, especially governance, data quality, metadata, and reference and master data.
• Hands-on experience with at least one data catalog or governance platform, such as Collibra, Alation, Informatica Axon/CD Microsoft Purview, or Atlan.
• Hands-on experience with at least one MDM platform, such as Informatica MDM, Reltio, Profisee, Stibo STEP, or SAP MDG.
• Ability to facilitate executive and cross-functional working sessions and to hold business owners accountable without formal authority over them.
• Strong writing: policies, charters, and steering-committee material that executives will actually read.

Nice to have

• CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional) certification from DAMA International.
• Experience with the EDM Council's DCAM framework or another maturity assessment model.
• Background in regulated industries or with regulatory drivers such as SOX, GDPR, CCPA, or HIPAA.
• Supply chain, manufacturing, or finance master data experience (supplier, material, customer, chart of accounts).
• SQL skills sufficient to profile data and validate quality rules yourself.
• Consulting or professional services background.