Metadata Specialist | Data Catalog Administrator

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Benefits package

Professional development

Job summary

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is seeking a Metadata Specialist to manage enterprise metadata, catalogs, and governance across the organization.

You will collaborate with data owners, analysts, engineers, and governance teams to document data assets, ensure consistent classification, and improve findability and understanding of information assets.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field.
• Proven experience in metadata management, data catalog administration, or governance.
• Strong understanding of metadata concepts, catalogs, glossaries, and lineage.
• Experience with enterprise data-catalog platforms.

Responsibilities

• Manage and maintain enterprise data catalogs, metadata repositories, and glossaries.
• Create, update, review, and maintain metadata for databases, apps, reports, dashboards, and files.
• Define and maintain technical, business, and descriptive metadata.
• Ensure data assets are accurately documented with descriptions, ownership, and usage info.
• Maintain data dictionaries, reference data, and standardized terminology.
• Collaborate with data owners to capture accurate business definitions.
• Identify relationships between datasets, systems, reports, and processes.
• Maintain data lineage and support traceability from source to downstream apps.
• Monitor metadata quality across the organization and perform reviews.
• Establish metadata standards, naming conventions, and documentation guidelines.
• Support data-governance initiatives and align metadata with policies.
• Configure and administer data-catalog platforms and metadata-management tools.
• Manage catalog structures, categories, tags, domains, and user permissions.
• Coordinate onboarding for new datasets, systems, and data products.
• Improve searchability, categorization, tagging, and descriptions in the catalog.
• Work with data engineers to capture metadata from databases, APIs, warehouses, and lakes.
• Assist in harvesting, scanning, profiling, and synchronization activities.
• Document ownership, stewardship, sensitivity classifications, and access requirements.
• Support privacy and security initiatives with metadata classifications.
• Identify PII and sensitive data elements.
• Develop metadata-quality reports and dashboards.
• Investigate inconsistencies and coordinate corrective actions.
• Support lineage, impact analysis, and dependency analysis for changes.
• Assist in data migration, cloud transformations, and platform projects.
• Provide guidance and training on catalogs, standards, and discovery processes.
• Develop operating standards and user guides for metadata management.
• Participate in governance groups and cross-functional initiatives.
• Identify opportunities to automate metadata collection and synchronization.
• Continuously improve usability, coverage, and reliability of the data catalog.

Skills

Metadata management

Data governance

Data catalog

Documentation

Stakeholder management

SQL

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Data Management, Information Systems, Business Analytics, or a related field

Tools

Collibra

Alation

Informatica

Microsoft Purview

Job description

We’re Hiring: Metadata Specialist | Data Catalog Administrator

Employment Type: Full-Time

Level: Mid-Level to Senior

We are looking for a detail-oriented Metadata Specialist | Data Catalog Administrator to manage enterprise metadata, maintain data catalogs, and improve the discoverability, understanding, and governance of organizational data. This role will work closely with data owners, analysts, engineers, governance teams, and business stakeholders to ensure data assets are accurately documented, consistently classified, and easy to find and understand.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage and maintain enterprise data catalogs, metadata repositories, and business glossaries.
• Create, update, review, and maintain metadata for databases, applications, reports, dashboards, files, and other data assets.
• Define and maintain technical, business, operational, and descriptive metadata.
• Ensure data assets are accurately documented with appropriate descriptions, classifications, ownership, and usage information.
• Maintain business glossaries, data dictionaries, reference data, and standardized terminology.
• Collaborate with data owners and subject‑matter experts to capture accurate business definitions.
• Identify and document relationships between datasets, systems, reports, and business processes.
• Maintain data lineage information and support traceability from source systems to downstream applications and reports.
• Monitor metadata completeness, accuracy, consistency, and quality across the organization.
• Perform regular metadata reviews and identify outdated, missing, or inconsistent information.
• Establish metadata standards, naming conventions, classification rules, and documentation guidelines.
• Support data‑governance initiatives by ensuring metadata aligns with organizational policies and standards.
• Configure and administer data‑catalog platforms and metadata‑management tools.
• Manage catalog structures, categories, tags, domains, user permissions, workflows, and approval processes.
• Coordinate metadata onboarding for new datasets, systems, applications, and data products.
• Support data discovery by improving searchability, categorization, tagging, and descriptions within the data catalog.
• Work with data engineers and technical teams to capture metadata from databases, APIs, data warehouses, and data lakes.
• Assist with metadata harvesting, scanning, profiling, and synchronization activities.
• Document data ownership, stewardship responsibilities, sensitivity classifications, and access requirements.
• Support data privacy and security initiatives by maintaining appropriate metadata classifications for sensitive information.
• Assist in identifying personally identifiable information (PII), confidential data, and other sensitive data elements.
• Develop metadata‑quality reports, dashboards, and monitoring metrics.
• Investigate metadata inconsistencies and coordinate corrective actions with relevant stakeholders.
• Support data lineage, impact analysis, and dependency analysis for business and technical changes.
• Assist with data migration, system implementation, cloud transformation, and data‑platform projects.
• Provide guidance and training to business users on data catalogs, metadata standards, and data‑discovery processes.
• Develop documentation, procedures, user guides, and operating standards for metadata management.
• Participate in data‑governance working groups and cross‑functional data‑management initiatives.
• Identify opportunities to automate metadata collection, validation, classification, and synchronization.
• Continuously improve the usability, coverage, and reliability of the organization’s data catalog.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Data Management, Information Systems, Business Analytics, or a related field.
• Proven experience in metadata management, data catalog administration, data governance, data management, or a related discipline.
• Strong understanding of metadata concepts, data catalogs, data dictionaries, business glossaries, and data lineage.
• Experience administering or supporting enterprise data‑catalog or metadata‑management platforms.
• Familiarity with data governance frameworks, standards, policies, and stewardship practices.
• Experience documenting technical and business metadata for enterprise data assets.
• Strong understanding of databases, data warehouses, data lakes, and enterprise information systems.
• Knowledge of SQL and relational database concepts is preferred.
• Familiarity with APIs, ETL/ELT processes, data integration, and data pipelines is advantageous.
• Experience working with cloud data platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud is beneficial.
• Familiarity with data‑catalog and governance tools such as Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Microsoft Purview, Atlan, or equivalent platforms is advantageous.
• Understanding of data lineage and data‑impact analysis concepts.
• Knowledge of data classification, data privacy, information security, and access‑control principles.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Excellent attention to detail and documentation skills.
• Ability to translate complex technical data concepts into clear business descriptions.
• Strong communication and stakeholder‑management abilities.
• Ability to work effectively with data engineers, architects, analysts, data owners, and business users.
• Strong organizational and project‑management skills.
• Ability to manage multiple metadata‑management initiatives and priorities simultaneously.
• Experience with data‑quality monitoring and metadata‑quality improvement is beneficial.
• Familiarity with data modeling, taxonomy, ontology, or semantic data concepts is advantageous.
• Strong understanding of data standards, naming conventions, and controlled vocabularies.
• Proactive approach to identifying metadata gaps and improving data discoverability.
• Relevant certifications in data governance, metadata management, information management, or related fields are beneficial.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and comprehensive employee benefits.
• Opportunity to work with enterprise‑scale data platforms and information systems.
• Exposure to modern data governance, metadata management, and data‑catalog technologies.
• Professional development in data management, data governance, analytics, and information architecture.
• Training and support for relevant technical certifications.
• Opportunities to participate in cloud migration, data transformation, and enterprise data initiatives.
• Collaboration with experienced data engineers, architects, analysts, and governance professionals.
• Opportunities to contribute to enterprise‑wide data standards and governance programs.
• Recognition for improving data discoverability, documentation quality, and data governance maturity.
• Career progression toward Senior Metadata Specialist, Data Governance Specialist, Data Catalog Manager, Metadata Manager, or Data Governance Lead.