Data Governance Specialist

advancelocalcareersite; United States; Hybrid; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

Advance Local is seeking a Data Governance Specialist - Technology in Jersey City, NJ. This role is primarily remote but requires some in-office attendance, focusing on establishing governance standards across data assets.

You will partner with business teams to define controls, manage classifications, and ensure privacy compliance while coordinating with engineering and security partners to implement scalable governance across the company’s data landscape.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field.
• 3–5 years in GRC, data governance, or data management.
• Experience leading cross-discipline project teams.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Proficiency in SQL and data reporting/analysis tooling.
• Knowledge of privacy regulations like CCPA.

Responsibilities

• Define, document, and maintain data governance procedures and standards.
• Coordinate data classification, dictionaries, metadata, and lineage documentation.
• Enforce PII handling and data retention standards across environments.
• Produce reports and dashboards tracking governance metrics.
• Work with security, data engineering, and legal to align access and exports with privacy rules.
• Support DPIAs and risk assessments as required.

Skills

Data governance

GRC

SQL

Stakeholder management

Data quality

Privacy regulations

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Metadata management 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 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.