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.
