Job Purpose:
The Data Governance Specialist supports the development and implementation of the University’s institutional data governance framework, helping define and embed the standards, policies and data trustee and steward roles that keep the University’s data accurate, consistent, secure, appropriately classified and responsibly used throughout its lifecycle.
Working across academic units and administrative support services, the role builds practical governance practices and strengthens data trusteeship and stewardship, so that trusted data is available for institutional planning, regulatory reporting, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The role focuses on institutional data domains, including student information, admissions, academic programs and courses, workforce and other institutional data.
Key Responsibilities:
Governance Framework, Policy and Standards
- Support the design and development of the University’s data governance framework, operating model, policies, standards, procedures and controls, and support their implementation and ongoing improvement.
- Track and report progress against the data governance roadmap, including agreed priorities and maturity objectives.
- Translate governance principles into practical processes that can be applied consistently across institutional data domains.
- Translate approved governance policies and standards into operational procedures, workflows and controls in collaboration with data trustees, stewards and technical teams.
- Develop and document governance policies, standards, procedures, guidance and templates that support adoption and audit readiness, and align with privacy, security, classification, retention and United Arab Emirates (UAE) regulatory requirements.
- Gather information on emerging data governance practices to inform recommendations on approaches suited to institutional data governance in a research-intensive AI university.
Data Stewardship and Culture
- Support the Director in identifying data trustees and data stewards for critical institutional data domains by preparing domain information and maintaining the register, and support the definition of trustee, steward, custodian and user responsibilities.
- Assist data trustees and stewards in understanding and carrying out their responsibilities, and coordinate the data steward network through regular meetings, working groups and knowledge sharing.
- Escalate unresolved accountability, quality, definition or access issues through the appropriate governance channels.
- Support the development and delivery of awareness sessions and training on data governance, data quality, stewardship, classification, privacy and responsible data use.
- Support communication materials, knowledge resources and communities of practice that build awareness of data as an institutional asset.
Data Quality, Metadata and Lineage
- Draft data quality rules and maintain monitoring processes and work with stakeholders to prepare proposed quality thresholds for critical data elements.
- Conduct data profiling and quality assessments, maintain a register of data quality issues, coordinate root cause analysis and corrective action, and monitor resolution.
- Support preventive and detective data quality controls within source systems, integrations, data platforms and reporting processes.
- Support the implementation and administration of the data catalog, business glossary, metadata repository, and data lineage capabilities.
- Document critical data elements, business definitions, source systems, data trustees and stewards, classification, permitted use and downstream dependencies, and promote consistent terminology across the University.
Monitoring, Reporting and Improvement
- Monitor implementation of agreed actions and controls, escalate overdue or unresolved issues, and report progress to the appropriate governance forum.
- Collect and report data for governance performance indicators, including adoption of standards, stewardship coverage, issue-resolution timeliness and data quality improvement.
- Prepare data quality and data usage reports and dashboards for the Director to present to management and governance committees.
- Monitor adoption of governance practices, gather stakeholder feedback, and use it to improve governance processes and resources.
- Take on related duties as the University’s data priorities evolve.
Other Duties:
Perform all other duties as reasonably directed by the line manager that are commensurate with these functional objectives.
Qualifications and Criteria:
- Bachelor’s degree in information management, data management, information systems, computer science, analytics or a related discipline. A relevant master’s degree is desirable.
Essential:
- At least five years of relevant experience in data governance, data management, data quality, metadata management, information governance, privacy or a related field.
- Practical experience developing, implementing or supporting a data governance framework, including standards, policies, quality rules and data trustee and steward roles, within a complex organization.
- Experience working with data trustees, data stewards, technical teams and business stakeholders, and contributing to cross-functional initiatives.
- Hands-on experience with data governance and catalog platforms (for example Microsoft Purview, Collibra, Informatica or Alation) and with enterprise systems (such as student information, enterprise resource planning and human resources systems) and cloud platforms, with emphasis on the ability to implement workflows, metadata standards and governance processes rather than familiarity with a particular vendor alone.
Preferred:
- Strong understanding of data governance principles, data quality, metadata, lineage, master and reference data, and the data lifecycle, with familiarity with established frameworks and methodologies such as the Data Management Association (DAMA) Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK).
- Understanding of privacy, information security, data classification, retention and data sharing, and familiarity with UAE data protection and data management requirements.
- Understanding of higher education institutional data, such as student, admissions, program, course and workforce data, and how it supports institutional and regulatory reporting, ideally gained through institutional reporting, university administration or other complex, multi-domain organizations.
- Ability to analyze datasets, profile data and investigate quality issues using tools such as Structured Query Language (SQL), Microsoft Excel or Power BI.
- Experience tracking and reporting on governance key performance indicators and remediation, documenting controls and reporting governance outcomes.
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to collaborate with stakeholders and escalate issues appropriately.
- Strong documentation, policy writing, process mapping and analytical skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.