Data Steward

EXL Talent Acquisition Team; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

EXL Talent Acquisition Team seeks a seasoned data governance professional to lead ownership, glossaries, and metadata standards across enterprise data domains. You will establish quality controls, classify sensitive data, and document complete data lineage to support compliant data operations.

You will collaborate with Data Engineering, Privacy, and Analytics teams to drive governance for modernization efforts, including cloud migrations and platform migrations, ensuring scalable, auditable data

Qualifications

• 7+ years in data governance, stewardship, quality, or data management.
• Strong knowledge of metadata, lineage, classification, access governance, privacy.
• Experience defining and monitoring data quality rules, KPIs, remediation, including profiling.
• Experience with data contracts, schema governance, data-quality SLAs, change management.
• Proficiency in SQL and cloud data platforms.
• Experience with catalog/governance tools like Unity Catalog, Collibra, Alation, Informatica.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management across business and technical teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain data ownership, glossaries, CDEs, data dictionaries, and metadata standards across enterprise data domains.
• Establish and monitor data quality rules, controls, and thresholds; coordinate remediation with Data Engineering teams.
• Classify PII, confidential, and sensitive data assets with documented access controls and retention policies.
• Document end-to-end data lineage across source systems, data pipelines, and analytical data products.
• Support governance activities for data modernization initiatives, including migration to AWS and Databricks environments.
• Drive cross-functional governance forums to align on data definitions, ownership, and quality issues.
• Develop governance policies, standards, processes, metrics, and reporting for consistent data management.
• Define governance requirements for data contracts including ownership, quality, and lineage.
• Partner with Data Modelers, Data Engineers, and Data Product teams on data contract lifecycle and schema evolution.
• Promote governance best practices and accountability for data stewardship.

Skills

Data governance

Data stewardship

Data quality management

Stakeholder management

SQL proficiency

Communication

Tools

Databricks Unity Catalog

Collibra

Alation

Informatica

Job description

This role will collaborate closely with Business, Data Product, Engineering, Privacy, and Cybersecurity teams to strengthen data ownership, standardize business definitions, improve data quality, manage data classification and lineage, and ensure effective data access governance and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain data ownership, business glossaries, critical data elements (CDEs), data dictionaries, and metadata standards across enterprise data domains.
• Establish and monitor data quality rules, controls, and thresholds; identify data issues and coordinate remediation efforts with Data Engineering teams.
• Classify PII, confidential, and sensitive data assets, ensuring appropriate documentation of access controls, privacy requirements, retention policies, and approved usage guidelines.
• Document and maintain end-to-end business and technical data lineage across source systems, data pipelines, and analytical data products.
• Support governance activities for data modernization initiatives, including migration from legacy platforms to AWS and Databricks environments.
• Facilitate cross-functional governance forums, driving alignment and resolution of data definition, ownership, and quality issues across business and technology teams.
• Develop and implement governance policies, standards, processes, documentation, metrics, and reporting to promote consistent data management practices.
• Define and enforce governance requirements for data contracts, including ownership, business definitions, data quality expectations, sensitivity classifications, lineage, and approved usage.
• Partner with Data Modelers, Data Engineers, and Data Product teams to manage data contract lifecycle activities, including schema evolution, versioning, change management, and producer-consumer accountability.
• Drive adoption of data governance best practices and foster accountability for data stewardship across business and technical stakeholder groups.

Qualifications

Qualifications (Required):

• 7+ years of experience in data governance, data stewardship, data quality, or data management.
• Strong knowledge of metadata, lineage, data classification, access governance, and privacy.
• Proven experience defining, implementing, and monitoring data quality rules, controls, KPIs, and remediation processes, including data profiling and root cause analysis.
• Experience with data contracts, schema governance, data-quality SLAs, change management processes.
• Working knowledge of SQL and modern enterprise data platforms, including cloud-based data lakes, warehouses, and analytics ecosystems.
• Experience with catalog/governance tools like Databricks Unity Catalog, Collibra, Alation, or Informatica.
• Strong communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to engage effectively with business, technical, risk, privacy, and executive stakeholders.

Ability to help shape a governance operating model, not only execute established processes.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience with modern data platforms and cloud technologies, including Databricks, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, and AWS.
• Domain expertise in media, streaming, advertising, subscription, audience, customer, or consumer data environments.
• Experience supporting large-scale data modernization and migration initiatives, including transitions from legacy platforms to cloud-based architectures.