Principal Consultant – Data Lead

Socket.dev; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Attain Partners seeks a Principal Consultant – Data Lead to guide Higher Education transformation, with strong Ascend CRM and advancement data experience. You will lead engagements, work hands‑on with SQL and data development, and drive governance, strategy, and integration discussions across client teams.

You will partner with executive stakeholders and functional Advancement teams to translate requirements into data architectures, migration plans, and enterprise data management standards.

Qualifications

• Senior data leader with hands‑on SQL, data development and governance.
• Strong experience in Higher Education data and CRM processes.
• Experience with Ascend implementations or migrations is highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Serve as primary data and technical contact for client leadership.
• Lead engagement scope, schedule, budget, risks, and deliverables.
• Mentor consultants and project team members throughout engagements.
• Advise on data migration, integration patterns, and data quality strategies.
• Translate business requirements into data and technical solutions.

Skills

SQL development

Data governance

Engagement leadership

Ascend CRM

Higher Education data

Data architecture

Data migration

Tools

Ascend CRM

Job description

Attain Partners is an innovative consulting firm dedicated to disrupting the status quo to change the world and improve the lives of those we touch. From strategy to technology and ever y where in between, our experts use their unique skills to advance the important missions of education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government clients.

People are at the center of all we do, and that’s why we empower career growth, provide industry‑leading benefits packages, encourage a flexible work environment, and foster a culture of inclusion to support the needs of our team. We share a collective passion for our mission and our people. Guided by our seven core values, The Attain Way, our vision is the foundation of our culture—to be and attain the best.

Principal Consultant – Data Lead

Role Overview

The Principal Consultant – Data Lead serves as the senior data leader for Higher Education transformation engagements, with a strong requirement for experience with Ascend CRM and Advancement data.

This role combines Engagement Leadership, hands‑on SQL and data development, Data Strategy, Data Governance, and Integration Advisory. The individual must be comfortable leading executive and client conversations while also working directly with technical teams to analyze data, develop SQL, define integration patterns, and drive successful delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Engagement & Client Leadership

• Serve as the primary data and technical point of contact for client leadership and key stakeholders.
• Build trusted client relationships and ensure strong satisfaction, retention, and value realization.
• Provide oversight across project scope, schedule, budget, risks, quality, and deliverables.
• Lead and mentor consultants, business analysts, developers, and other project team members.
• Facilitate executive and working‑team discussions, resolve issues proactively, and align delivery with client objectives.
• Identify risks, dependencies, and decisions requiring client or project leadership attention.
• Translate technical delivery activities into clear business outcomes and executive‑level communication.

Higher Education / Ascend CRM Leadership

• Bring strong knowledge of Higher Education Advancement data and CRM processes, preferably with direct Ascend CRM implementation or migration experience.
• Understand constituent, household, organization, gift, campaign, fund/designation, prospect, portfolio, and engagement data.
• Advise clients on data migration, conversion, reconciliation, integration, and data quality strategies associated with Ascend implementations.
• Partner with functional Advancement teams to translate business requirements into data and technical solutions.
• Understand the relationships between Advancement CRM, finance, identity, marketing, analytics, and other institutional systems.

SQL Development & Data Engineering

The Data Lead must remain technically hands‑on and capable of directly supporting development when needed.

• Write and troubleshoot complex SQL queries.
• Analyze large datasets to identify data quality, transformation, mapping, and reconciliation issues.
• Support source‑to‑target mapping and migration development.
• Perform data profiling and assist with cleansing, normalization, deduplication, and transformation rules.
• Support developers during complex migration and integration troubleshooting.

Data Strategy

• Serve as a bridge between executive leadership, business stakeholders, functional teams, and technical engineering/analytics teams.
• Translate organizational goals and business requirements into actionable data strategies and technical requirements.
• Develop current‑state and future‑state data architectures and roadmaps.
• Advise clients on data platforms, integration patterns, analytics architecture, master data, and enterprise data management.
• Help clients define how operational, CRM, financial, engagement, and analytical data should work together across the organization.

Data Governance & Data Quality

• Establish and advise on enterprise data governance frameworks.
• Define data ownership, stewardship, accountability, and decision‑making structures.
• Develop data standards, business definitions, and data quality controls.
• Establish processes for:
  • Data quality monitoring
  • Data