Data Governance Lead

Data Governance & Data Quality Lead - Collibra & DQ

Experience Total: 12-18+ years Data Governance: 6-8+ years Collibra: 6+ years hands-on

Role Summary

The Data Governance Lead will design, build, and scale an enterprise data governance program from the ground up, using Collibra as the core platform for a large real estate enterprise. This senior role combines strategic leadership, hands-on Collibra configuration, stakeholder management, and deep domain knowledge of real estate data. The incumbent will own the governance vision, operating model, and tooling, and will partner with business, IT, data engineering, analytics, legal, and compliance teams.

Key Responsibilities

1. Data Governance Strategy and Operating Model

• Define and implement the enterprise data governance strategy, roadmap, and operating model aligned to business objectives.
• Define governance KPIs, maturity metrics, and success measures.
• Drive adoption through change management, communications, and training.

2. Collibra Implementation from Scratch

• Lead end-to-end Collibra implementation: platform setup, environment planning (Dev/Test/Prod), domain modeling, and taxonomy design.
• Customize asset models for real estate use cases.
• Configure and manage Business Glossary , Data Dictionary , Data Catalog , and Reference Data & Code Sets .
• Design and implement Collibra workflows for glossary lifecycle, owner/steward assignment, issue management, and escalation.
• Implement Collibra operating model with defined roles (Data Owner, Data Steward, Custodian, Consumer) and RACI mappings.
• Integrate Collibra with data warehouses/lakes (Snowflake, BigQuery, Azure), BI tools (Power BI, Tableau), and ETL/ELT tools (Informatica, dbt, ADF).
• Lead metadata ingestion across technical, operational, and business metadata.

3. Data Ownership, Stewardship, and Accountability

• Define and institutionalize data ownership and stewardship across business units.
• Partner with business leaders to assign Data Owners and Stewards.
• Drive accountability for data definitions, data quality, and metadata completeness.
• Establish Data Governance Councils and working groups.

4. Data Quality and Issue Management

• Collaborate with data quality teams to define Critical Data Elements (CDEs) and align rules and thresholds.
• Configure Collibra issue management workflows and ensure traceability from issues to root causes and remediation actions.
• Provide governance oversight for remediation and continuous improvement.

5. Compliance, Risk, and Security Governance

• Define governance controls for regulatory compliance, contractual data, and financial reporting.
• Partner with Legal, Risk, and Security to classify sensitive data and apply access and usage policies.
• Implement data classification and privacy metadata within Collibra.

6. Stakeholder and Program Leadership

• Serve as the single point of accountability for the data governance program.
• Present progress, metrics, and risks to senior leadership.
• Mentor governance analysts, stewards, and platform administrators.
• Coordinate with system integrators and vendors as required.

Required Skills and Qualifications

Mandatory

• 12-18+ years in data management, data governance, or analytics leadership.
• Deep hands-on experience implementing Collibra from scratch at enterprise scale.
• Strong expertise in business glossary and metadata management, stewardship models, and workflow automation in Collibra.
• Proven track record driving enterprise adoption of governance platforms.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.

Preferred

• Experience in real estate, property management, construction, facilities, or capital projects.
• Familiarity with DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM, or similar governance frameworks.
• Exposure to data quality tools such as SODA, Great Expectations, or Informatica DQ.
• Experience integrating Collibra with cloud data platforms.
• Prior experience leading governance programs in large, federated organizations.
• Collibra certification is a plus.

Behavioral and Leadership Attributes

• Strategic thinker with strong execution capability.
• Balances business pragmatism with governance rigor.
• Influences without formal authority and drives change.
• Excellent storytelling and change management skills.
• Hands-on leader who can configure Collibra and mentor teams.

Success Measures First 12 Months

• Collibra platform live with core real estate domains onboarded.
• Business glossary adopted across key business units.
• Formal data ownership established for critical datasets.
• Measurable improvement in metadata completeness and data quality visibility.
• Governance operating model embedded into daily business processes.