Data Governance Engineer

Position Title:  Data Governance Engineer

Reports to:  Data Governance Manager

Division:  Support Services - Business Excellence and IT

Department:  Information Technology

The Data Governance Engineer is a hands-on technical role responsible for designing, building, and operating the tooling and automation that underpin the organization's data governance program. The role implements and configures data governance platforms - including data catalogs, business glossaries, metadata, and lineage - and engineers automated data quality rules, monitoring, and remediation workflows. The Engineer embeds governance controls directly into data pipelines and data flows, integrates governance platforms with the wider data stack, and automates the enforcement of data classification, access, and stewardship policies. Working under the direction of the Data Governance Manager, the role partners with data engineering, data stewards, and business teams to improve data quality, reliability, and compliance, and to drive adoption of governance tooling and standards across the organization.

Direct Reports:  0 (Individual Contributor)

Total Reports:  0

Key Accountabilities:

• Design, configure, and maintain data governance platforms (e.g., Collibra, Alation, Informatica, or Microsoft Purview), including catalog, glossary, and workflow setup.
• Engineer automated data quality rules, monitoring, and alerting using tools such as Soda, Great Expectations, or Collibra DQ, with remediation workflows and SLA tracking.
• Build and automate metadata capture and data lineage across data sources, pipelines, and reports to enable transparency and traceability.
• Implement data classification and tagging, and configure role-based access and stewardship workflows within governance tooling.
• Embed governance controls into data pipelines and data flows - across data lakes, warehouses, ETL/ELT, and APIs - in partnership with data engineering.
• Integrate governance platforms with source systems and the broader data stack via APIs and connectors.
• Develop scripts and automation to operationalize governance policies, reduce manual effort, and improve data reliability.
• Monitor data quality, governance KPIs, and platform health, producing dashboards and reports for stewards and the Data Governance Manager.
• Support data privacy and compliance controls - masking, retention, and classification - in line with regulatory requirements.
• Troubleshoot governance tooling and pipeline issues, performing root-cause analysis and driving remediation.
• Maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and configuration standards for governance tooling.
• Collaborate with data owners, stewards, and engineering teams to drive adoption of governance tooling and standards.

Key Technical Skills and Proficiency Levels:

• Internal: Information Technology, Data Engineering, Business Units, Compliance, Legal, Data Stewards
• External: Data governance tool vendors and integrators

6.  CONTEXT, WORK ENVIRONMENT AND DECISION-MAKING AUTHORITY

• Operates in a collaborative, compliance-driven, and hands-on engineering environment.
• Makes technical configuration and automation decisions within established governance frameworks and standards.
• Recommends tooling and process improvements and escalates governance issues and risks to the Data Governance Manager.

7.  FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Indirectly influences cost savings and risk mitigation through effective data governance engineering, automation, and improved data reliability.

Essential:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or a related field.
• Minimum 4-6 years of experience in data engineering, data management, or data governance engineering roles.
• Hands-on experience configuring data governance platforms (e.g., Collibra, Alation, Informatica, or Microsoft Purview).
• Strong SQL and scripting (Python or similar) and experience with data quality tooling.
• Sound understanding of data governance principles, metadata management, and data lineage.

Desirable:

• Experience with cloud data platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP) and the modern data stack.
• Relevant certifications (e.g., DAMA CDMP, cloud data engineering, or platform-specific credentials such as Collibra or Purview).
• Experience embedding governance controls into CI/CD or data pipeline automation.

Note: This job description provides a broad indication of the role and responsibilities of the position. The position holder may be required to perform additional tasks and responsibilities not listed here, in line with organizational needs and changes in business priorities.