Data Management & Governance Implementation Expert

About the Role

Implementation Responsibilities

• Lead or support end-to-end implementation projects from assessment and requirements gathering through design, configuration, testing, deployment, and operational handover.
• Assess client data landscapes, systems, processes, governance practices, and technical capabilities and translate gaps into implementation roadmaps.
• Design vendor-neutral enterprise architectures for ingestion, integration, storage, lakehouse and warehouse environments, processing, orchestration, analytics, and consumption.
• Configure data catalogs, business glossaries, metadata repositories, data lineage, workflow management, policy enforcement, and stewardship capabilities.
• Implement data quality frameworks with profiling, critical data elements, validation rules, scorecards, issue workflows, root-cause analysis, and remediation tracking.
• Support master data and reference data management, including golden records, matching and merging rules, hierarchies, and governance workflows.

Data Platforms and Security

• Develop batch, real-time, API-based, structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data integration pipelines.
• Support data warehouse, data lake, and lakehouse implementations, including modeling, storage, marts, partitioning, retention, archiving, and performance optimization.
• Implement role-based access, data classification, encryption, audit logging, segregation of duties, and identity and access management integration.
• Enable business intelligence, self-service analytics, executive dashboards, operational reporting, advanced analytics, and AI-ready data environments.
• Support alignment with relevant national data platforms where applicable.

Deliverables and Stakeholder Engagement

• Develop architecture documents, requirements specifications, data models, configuration documents, policies, procedures, manuals, test cases, traceability matrices, runbooks, and compliance evidence.
• Facilitate requirements workshops, design sessions, technical demonstrations, user acceptance testing, training, and knowledge transfer.
• Coordinate with client teams, vendors, implementation partners, and subject-matter experts to meet scope, quality, security, and regulatory requirements.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, integration constraints, and data issues and drive mitigation and resolution actions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline.
• 5 to 8 years of relevant experience in data management, data governance, data engineering, enterprise data platforms, or related consulting and implementation roles.
• Hands-on experience delivering data management and governance projects within Saudi Arabia, preferably for government entities or regulated organizations.
• Experience implementing or configuring data governance, metadata, catalog, lineage, quality, master data, reference data, integration, or analytics solutions.
• Understanding of NDMO requirements, the National Data Index, and Saudi data management, governance, and personal data protection standards.
• Understanding of data warehouses, data lakes, lakehouses, ETL/ELT pipelines, batch and streaming integration, APIs, data modeling, and analytical platforms.
• Working knowledge of SQL, data modeling, APIs, integration patterns, and at least one scripting or programming language.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Must currently be based in Saudi Arabia and be available for client-site work when required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with on-premises, cloud, or hybrid data environments and familiarity with containerized and scalable platform architectures.
• Knowledge of DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM, COBIT, TOGAF, or other recognized data management and governance frameworks or relevant certifications.