Global Data Steward

WPP; Chennai District; On-site; INR 900,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Global exposure

Job summary

WPP in Chennai, India, seeks an experienced Global Data Steward to manage Master Data governance across Clients, Media, and Suppliers. You will work with Matrix MDM, ensuring data quality, consistency, and enterprise usability while guiding AI-assisted mappings and approvals.

You will collaborate with Local Data Stewards, Finance, Product, and Platform teams in a hybrid work model to uphold data standards and drive timely stewardship across markets.

Qualifications

• Experience in Master Data Management, data stewardship, data governance, or data quality roles.
• Strong understanding of golden records, canonical entities, hierarchies, and deduplication.
• Experience with MDM tools and approval workflows; familiarity with AI-assisted mappings is a plus.
• Structured, organized, and able to push stakeholders to meet data quality standards.

Responsibilities

• Review, validate, and approve AI-generated mapping recommendations using Matrix MDM.
• Ensure mappings correctly represent real-world entities and avoid duplication or incorrect hierarchies.
• Enforce global standards, naming conventions, and data models across domains.
• Approve new master data additions to the Golden List for Clients, Media, and Suppliers.
• Drive local market and finance teams to complete mappings and resolve ambiguities.
• Provide feedback to improve AI-assisted mastering and stewardship efficiency.
• Act as guardian of data quality and enterprise usability of master data.

Skills

MDM

Data governance

Data quality

AI-assisted mapping

Canonical entities

Deduplication

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional collaboration

Governance frameworks

Communication

Tools

Matrix MDM

Job description

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands.

We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth.
We work with the world's most valuable brands and have global reach across 100+ markets, with deep local expertise.
Our people are the key to our success. We're committed to fostering a culture of creativity, belonging and continuous learning, attracting and developing the brightest talent, and providing exciting career opportunities that help our people grow.
For more information, visit WPP.com.

We are seeking an experienced and detail‑oriented Global Data Steward to join our team in Chennai, India, supporting WPP Media’s global Master Data Management (MDM) initiative.

This role plays a critical part in maintaining the integrity of WPP Media’s Golden Master Data assets across domains such as Clients, Media, Suppliers, and other core business entities. The role works hands‑on with AI‑assisted mastering and mapping in our internally developed MDM platform, Matrix.

The role requires strong ownership, sound judgement, and an attitude focused on getting it right — not just getting it approved. The Global Data Steward is expected to actively drive data quality outcomes, challenge poor inputs or AI recommendations, and ensure that master data decisions are correct, intentional, and fit for long‑term enterprise use.

As a Global Data Steward, you will work cross‑region with markets, finance teams, and global stakeholders. A structured, proactive, and assertive (“pushy when needed”) approach is essential to ensure mappings are completed, standards are met, and nothing critical stalls.

What you'll be doing:

• Review, validate, and approve AI‑generated mapping recommendations using WPP Media’s internal Matrix MDM tool.
• Apply strong judgement to ensure AI recommendations:
• Correctly represent real‑world business entities.
• Do not introduce duplication, fragmentation, or incorrect hierarchies.
• Follow agreed global standards, naming conventions, and data models.
• Assess and approve new master data additions to the Golden List across multiple domains (e.g. Client, Media, Supplier).
• Actively drive and push local, market, and finance teams to:
• Complete required mappings.
• Resolve unclear or missing information.
• Correct poor‑quality or inconsistent submissions.
• Challenge, reject, or return mappings and requests where data is incomplete, incorrect, or poorly justified.
• Take ownership of end‑to‑end stewardship flow, ensuring items do not stall in queues or wait indefinitely for market action.
• Provide structured feedback into Matrix to improve AI‑assisted mastering and stewardship efficiency over time.
• Serve as a guardian of data quality, consistency, and enterprise usability of master data.
• Collaborate closely with Local Data Stewards, Finance, Product, and Platform teams to ensure alignment on standards and expectations.
• Enforce and uphold data governance principles, approval workflows, and escalation paths.
• Escalate complex, disputed, or model‑level issues to the appropriate governance forum when required.
• Ensure all stewardship decisions are clearly documented, auditable, and transparent.

What you’ll need:

• Experience in Master Data Management, data stewardship, data governance, or data quality roles, ideally in a global or multi‑market organization.
• Strong understanding of master data concepts including golden records, canonical entities, hierarchies, and deduplication.
• Experience working with MDM tools and approval workflows (experience with internally built tools is an advantage).
• Comfortable reviewing and challenging AI‑assisted or rule‑based mappings (no ML development required).
• Highly structured, organized, and comfortable pushing stakeholders to meet data quality and completion standards.
• Strong attention to detail combined with the ability to think long‑term and cross‑domain.
• Confident in saying “no”, “not yet”, or “this needs fixing” when quality is at risk.
• Clear communicator, able to interact effectively with business, finance, and technical teams.
• Experience operating within formal governance and decision‑authority models is a strong advantage.

Additional Competencies We Strongly Recommend for This Role

Data Governance & Control

• Understanding of stewardship layers (local vs global), decision authority, and escalation models.
• Appreciation for auditability, traceability, and consistency over speed.

Stakeholder & Execution Drive

• Comfortable chasing, reminding, and escalating when markets or teams do not complete required mappings.
• Able to balance collaboration with firmness to keep the master data agenda moving.
• Ability to apply the same quality bar across multiple master data domains, not just one.

Operational Ownership Mindset

• Sees stewardship as active ownership, not a review inbox.

Proactively prevents backlogs, rework, and downstream impact.

Who you are:

You're open: we are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: we approach all that we do with confidence: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: We are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people – we champion a culture of people that do extraordinary work

Scale and opportunity – we offer the opportunity to create, influence and deliver projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work – unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

WPP is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.