Data Governance Specialist

AgUpdate; Jersey City (NJ); Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

AgUpdate is seeking a Data Governance Specialist to join the Technology team in Jersey City, NJ. The role supports governance, risk, and compliance initiatives, ensuring data quality, privacy, and regulatory alignment across data assets.

The position is primarily remote with in-office attendance required. You will work with cross-functional teams, drive DPIAs, track metrics, and influence data governance standards across platforms and pipelines.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS or related field.
• 3 to 5 years’ experience in GRC, data governance, data management, or a related role.
• Excellent oral and written communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Proficiency in SQL and experience with data analysis and reporting tools.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Understanding of online privacy issues and challenges.
• Knowledge of media industry and digital audience analytics is a plus.
• Experience with metadata management and content classification tools is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Partner with business teams to define and maintain data governance procedures.
• Drive data classification, dictionaries, metadata, and lineage documentation.
• Collaborate with engineering on lineage tooling and documentation.
• Enforce standards for PII handling and data retention across environments.
• Provide training to stakeholders on governance best practices.
• Conduct risk assessments and DPIAs as required by privacy laws.
• Generate dashboards to track governance, data quality, and compliance metrics.
• Ensure governance is integrated into pipelines and models.

Skills

SQL

Data governance

GRC

Stakeholder mgmt

Data quality

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Metadata management tools

Data profiling tools

Reporting tools

Job description

Strengthening and empowering all of the communities we serve.

Data Governance Specialist - Technology

Based in Jersey City, NJ, this position is primarily remote but requires some in-office attendance.

The Data Governance Specialist is a key contributor to the organization’s Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) strategy, ensuring robust data governance, risk management, and regulatory compliance across all data assets. As part of the technology team, this role supports the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of data governance frameworks, risk controls, and compliance monitoring processes to safeguard sensitive information, enhance data quality, and ensure alignment with internal policies and external regulations. This role is essential in enabling data-driven decision-making as well as building and enforcing data governance standards. This role reports to the Director of Risk, Compliance & Support.

The base salary range is $115,000 to $135,000 per year.

What you’ll be doing:

Partner with business teams to define, document, and maintain data governance and quality procedures, translating standards into actionable controls and creating new standards where needed. Will drive and coordinate data classification, dictionaries, metadata, and lineage documentation across all data assets to support discoverability, audit readiness, and risk mitigation. Partner with engineering on lineage tooling and keep documentation current as the environment evolves. Define and enforce standards for PII handling and data retention across production, staging, and test environments, ensuring privacy obligations are metconsistently,and data isretainedonly as long asrequired. Provide training and guidance to business stakeholders, data owners, and data stewards on data governance best practices. Manage the effort to conduct and maintain Risk Assessments and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) as required by comprehensive online privacy legislation. Generate reports and dashboards to track governance performance, data quality, risk indicators, and compliance metrics. Collaborate with Advance Cyber, Infrastructure Security, Data Engineering, and Enterprise Services to establish guidelines for user access, platform roles, table creation, integration connection, data exports, and AI/ML access based on data privacy considerations. Support data quality initiatives including profiling, monitoring, and remediation across revenue and audience data. In partnership with data owners and engineering, conduct systematic analysis of data assets toidentifyintegrity issues, investigate root causes, and drive remediation. Serve as the policy-layer owner for all data platforms, covering access patterns, data sharing, integration connections, and export controls, and partner with data engineering to ensure governance requirements are built into pipelines and models, not applied after the fact. Ensure adherence to data privacy regulations such as CCPA and other U.S. state laws. Liaise with Infrastructure, legal, and business teams to resolve governance issues. Support data risk assessments and contribute to compliance audits. Operate escalation procedures in the event of an incident. Participate in monitoring, triaging, and resolving infrastructure security issues to ensure the stability and security of the company’s infrastructure. Track governance performance, data quality metrics, and risk indicators, and partner with thebroader engineering organizationto ensure governance policy and infrastructure security arealigned;surface findings to data leadership. Develop and maintain scripts for automation to streamline processes and improve efficiency.

To be considered for this role, you should have:

Bachelor's degree, preferably in computer science or related field 3 to 5 years’ experience in GRC, data governance, data management, or a related role Experience leading and coordinating cross-discipline project teams Excellent oral and written communication and stakeholder management skills Proficiency in SQL and experience with data analysis and reporting tools Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities Understanding of online privacy issues and challenges Knowledge of media industry and digital audience analytics is a plus Experience with metadata management and content classification tools is a plus

General office environment. Extensive computer use required.