Senior Data Governance Consultant

Data Sentinel Inc.; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 240,000 - 360,000; Full time

Job summary

Data Sentinel is seeking a senior data governance consultant to support a strategic data governance program in Saudi Arabia. You will work with business stakeholders, data owners, and IT teams to operationalize governance, metadata, and data quality across the enterprise.

The role requires strong consulting experience, knowledge of NDMO/NDI expectations, and the ability to translate governance concepts into actionable operating models and governance artifacts for leadership.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience across data governance, data management, data architecture, data engineering, business analysis, or related fields.
• Strong working knowledge of NDMO / NDI concepts in Saudi Arabia.
• Experience with data catalog, metadata management, business glossary, lineage, data quality, data classification, and stewardship processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead operationalization of data governance across the organization with business stakeholders and IT teams.
• Define and document data ownership, stewardship roles, governance workflows, and decision-making forums.
• Translate business requirements into practical governance, metadata, lineage, and data quality requirements.

Skills

Consulting experience

Stakeholder management

Executive communication

Workshop facilitation

Data governance

Data management

Problem solving

Business analysis

Governance workflows

Tools

Microsoft Purview

Informatica

Metadata management

Data catalog

Data quality tools

Job description

We are looking for a senior data governance consultant with a strong technical background to support a strategic data governance and data management project in Saudi Arabia.

This role combines standards development, operationalization of policies through direct engagement, and technical implementation. The ideal candidate can flexibly translate governance concepts into practical operating models, data controls, metadata practices, data quality rules, stewardship workflows, and business-facing recommendations.

The role requires an individual with strong consulting experience who understands the Saudi data governance landscape, including the National Data Management Office (NDMO) and National Data Index (NDI) expectations, and can explain how data governance domains connect across business processes, systems, data ownership, data quality, metadata, classification, access, privacy, reporting, and operational decision-making.

About Data Sentinel

Data Sentinel is a technology and advisory company focused on data and AI trust. Our platform helps organizations discover, understand, govern, and protect data across complex environments, while our advisory team helps clients operationalize data governance, privacy, data management, and AI readiness in a practical way.

For this engagement, Data Sentinel is supporting the client with the operating model, governance practices, technical enablement, and business-facing adoption needed to move from standards and policies into day-to-day execution.

What You Will Do

You will work directly with business stakeholders, data owners, data stewards, IT teams, data engineers, architects, and governance leadership to help operationalize data governance across the organization.

Key responsibilities include:

• Support the implementation and operationalization of data governance practices aligned to NDMO / NDI expectations and industry best practices.
• Help define and document data ownership, stewardship roles, governance workflows, and decision-making forums.
• Work with business teams to understand critical data elements, business terms, data issues, reporting needs, and operational pain points.
• Translate business requirements into practical data governance, metadata, lineage, data quality, and architecture requirements.
• Create and refine data catalogs, business glossaries, metadata standards, lineage views, and data quality rules.
• Help map governance controls to practical evidence, activities, workflows, dashboards, and remediation actions.
• Facilitate workshops with business and technical stakeholders.
• Advise on how NDMO domains connect from a governance perspective
• Support maturity assessments, gap analysis, remediation planning, and executive reporting.
• Help convert governance concepts into clear business-facing outputs that leadership can understand and act on.
• Work with data platform, catalog, quality, or governance tools where applicable.

Required Experience

The successful candidate should have:

• 8+ years of experience across data governance, data management, data architecture, data engineering, business analysis, or related fields.
• Strong working knowledge of NDMO / NDI concepts in Saudi Arabia.
• Practical understanding of how governance domains connect across the enterprise, not just theoretical knowledge of the framework.
• Experience with data catalog, metadata management, business glossary, lineage, data quality, data classification, and stewardship processes.
• Ability to work with both business and technical teams.
• Strong communication skills at the leadership/executive level; Selfstarter/independent worker with consulting experience, including workshop facilitation, stakeholder management, requirements gathering, executive communication, and structured problem-solving.
• Ability to create clear documentation, governance artifacts, business-facing summaries, and remediation plans.
• Experience working in complex enterprise environments with multiple stakeholder groups.

Technical Skills

Strong candidates should have experience with some of the following:

• Data governance and data catalog tools such as Microsoft Purview, Informatica, or similar platforms.
• Data quality tools such as Informatica Data Quality / Cloud Data Quality or equivalent.
• Metadata, lineage, cataloging, and glossary implementation.
• Data classification, access control, RBAC, masking, retention, archival, and privacy related controls.
• Dashboarding, scorecards, KPI reporting, or governance metrics.
• Familiarity with the appropriate use of AI tools to support governance, deliverables, and outputs.

Consulting Skills

This role requires someone who can operate confidently in business conversations.

The candidate must be able to:

• Lead structured conversations with senior stakeholders.
• Ask strong discovery questions.
• Separate symptoms from root causes.
• Explain technical and governance concepts in plain business language.
• Build trust with business users, data owners, IT teams, and leadership.
• Push work forward without creating unnecessary friction.
• Convert ambiguity into clear next steps, decisions, and deliverables.
• Produce polished, client-ready outputs.
• Acts in a professional, respectful, and ethical manner.
• Demonstrates accountability, effective communication, and a commitment to positive working relationships.
• Adapts to organizational values, policies, and standards of conduct.
• Collaborates effectively in a team environment, shares knowledge, and contributes to an inclusive workplace.

What We Are Not Looking For

This is important.

• We are not looking for someone who is only a compliance checklist resource.
• We are not looking for someone who only understands NDMO at a theoretical level.
• We are not looking for a pure data engineer who is not comfortable managing business conversations.
• We are not looking for a consultant who can produce documents but cannot understand systems, data flows, metadata, data quality, or architecture.
• The ideal person sits in the middle: technical enough to understand data environments, governance-savvy enough to understand NDMO, and consultative enough to work with business stakeholders.

Ideal Background

The strongest candidates may have previously worked as:

• Data Governance or Information Governance Consultant
• Data or Information Management Consultant
• Consulting skills or program delivery experience in:
• - Data Governance
• - Metadata / Data Catalog
• - Data Quality
• - Data Stewardship
• Data Governance Business Analyst
• Data Management Platform Consultant
• NDMO / NDI Consultant
• Experience in complex regulated environments would be considered an advantage.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience supporting NDMO, NDI, SDAIA-aligned, or Saudi national data governance programs.
• Experience working in Saudi Arabia or with Saudi clients.
• Familiarity with DAMA-DMBOK or equivalent data management frameworks.
• Experience with Informatica, Microsoft Purview, or similar governance platforms.
• Arabic language capability is a plus, but not mandatory.
• Strong written and verbal English communication is required.