Principal Data Lead

Important Notice for Applicants:At Bixal, we want to ensure a transparent and secure application process for all candidates. Official communication will come from an email address ending in @bixal.com or from @bixal.na.teamtailor-mail.com. Messages from other sources may be fraudulent, and you should exercise care to avoid any links or attachments included.Bixal will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Need Assistance or a Reasonable Accommodation?If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation to complete your application, we're here to help. Please reach out to us at View email address on click.appcast.io and let us know how we can support you. You do not need to share personal details or disclose the nature of your request. You can expect a response from a team member within 24 hours during the regular work week and on the next operating day during the weekend or holidays.Why Bixal?Bixal is a consulting company headquartered in Fairfax, VA, working alongside governments and organizations to help them deliver better services and experiences to the communities they serve. Using evidence-based knowledge and technology, Bixal empowers clients to deliver on their missions more effectively by fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement.Our values:People-First: Emphasizing the importance of people in all aspects of work.Collaboration and Transparency: Valuing teamwork and open communication.Growth Mindset: Encouraging innovation and continuous improvement.Creating Lasting Impact: Focusing on meaningful outcomes and positive change.About the role:Bixal is seeking a Principal Data Lead to help lead the strategy, governance, and quality of data on one of our large-scale federal data platform programs. In this role, you'll own execution of the data strategy for a multi-year enterprise data platform, lead the data supply chain, and drive a multi-phase metadata maturity program that raises the bar for how data is documented, trusted, and reused across the platform. You'll govern how data is promoted from initial ingestion through validated, trusted status, set and maintain data quality standards, and serve as the connective tissue between the platform team and the many upstream source-system teams and business data owners who depend on it.This is foundational work: the metadata and data quality practices you lead are what make it possible to safely expand governed self-service analytics and AI use cases. If you enjoy building durable data governance capability inside a live, high-stakes production environment — not just writing policy — we'd love to hear from you.This is a unique opportunity to make a meaningful impact on a project that aligns with Bixal’s mission of delivering innovative, human-centered solutions. This role can work remotely from anywhere in the U.S. Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S., be able to obtain and maintain the required Public Trust clearance, and obtain a U.S. Federal Government client badge. Bixal does not sponsor employment visas or assume sponsorship of existing employment visas. At Bixal, we support your professional journey, ensuring your experience reflects our, purpose-driven culture and prepares you for future success.Compensation:The salary range for this role is $160,000 – $200,000. In the spirit of transparency, most offers tend to land near the midpoint of the range. We make compensation decisions thoughtfully, considering your experience, the skills you bring, and our commitment to internal equity. Fairness and transparency are core to how we operate.Responsibilities:Own execution of the data strategy for a large-scale enterprise data platform, aligning day-to-day delivery with the organization’s broader data strategy and strategic goals.Serve as the primary coordination point across multiple upstream source-system teams and business data owners, managing handoffs, ingestion readiness, and shared metadata standards across the ecosystem.Lead the data supply chain — source onboarding, ingestion, and transformation — and drive a multi-phase metadata maturity program, treating metadata as an operational capability rather than a one-time cataloging effort.Govern the promotion of data through a tiered catalog architecture (e.g., raw, source, and trusted layers), defining clear admission criteria and applying the model consistently across teams.Set and maintain data quality standards across the platform, including completeness, conformance, freshness against SLAs, and defect/rework tracking.Partner with engineering, product, and AI/platform teams to ensure metadata and data quality are sufficient to support expanding self-service analytics and AI use cases.Establish and track measures of data quality, metadata coverage, and promotion/certification cycle time, and use them to prioritize remediation work.Communicate data strategy progress, risks, and dependencies to technical and non-technical stakeholders, including client leadership.Participate in Agile/SAFe delivery cadences, including planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives.Other relevant duties as qualified and trained to perform.Qualifications:Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field, plus at least 12 years of related experience.Strong track record coordinating across multiple stakeholder teams and data owners in complex, multi-system environments.Demonstrated experience owning or leading a data strategy for a large, multi-source enterprise data platform.Experience designing and operating metadata governance or maturity programs, including cataloging, ownership models, and promotion/certification criteria.Experience with modern cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, or similar) and metadata/catalog tooling (e.g., Unity Catalog, Collibra, Alation, AWS Glue Data Catalog, Microsoft Purview).Experience defining and enforcing data quality standards, including completeness, conformance, freshness, and defect tracking.Working knowledge of distributed data processing concepts and common data programming or query languages (e.g., SQL, Python, Scala), sufficient to engage credibly with engineering teams on pipeline design and performance.Experience defining and enforcing data quality standards, including completeness, conformance, freshness, and defect tracking.Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical data concepts for non-technical audiences, including client leadership.Professional certification in a cloud or data platform (e.g., AWS, Databricks), data governance (e.g., DAMA CDMP), or Agile delivery (e.g., SAFe).Must be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance.Nice to Have Skills and Experience:Experience in highly regulated federal data domains (e.g., healthcare, benefits, or financial data).Familiarity with responsible AI governance and how metadata and data quality maturity gate the expansion of AI use cases.Hands-on experience building, tuning, or troubleshooting data pipelines on a cloud lakehouse platform (e.g., Databricks or comparable).Exposure to CI/CD, source control, and observability tooling as applied to data platform and pipeline operations.Experience with data lineage and impact-analysis tooling.Experience supporting or serving in a Key Personnel role on a federal contract.Background in federal digital services delivery.How We Support Our Team:Flex hours401K with matching incentiveParental LeaveMedical/dental/vision benefitsFlex Spending AccountCompany provided short-term disability and life insuranceCommuter benefitsPaid Time Off (PTO)11 Paid holidaysOur company is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all individuals and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws. Employment decisions are based on merit, qualifications, and business needs.