Senior Data Governance & Transformation Associate

Grant Thornton; Arlington (VA); Hybrid; USD 104,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Hybrid work model

Discretionary annual bonus

Job summary

Grant Thornton is seeking a Data Transformation & Governance Senior Associate to help embed governance, quality, and standards into data integration across both structured and unstructured content. You will inventory, categorize, and document data assets, drive compliance, and support migration planning with cross-functional teams.

The role focuses on acquired-company data, with governance responsibilities spanning retention, privacy, and regulatory requirements, and collaboration with Legal,

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in data governance, data transformation, data management, data quality, data integration, records and information management, data privacy and compliance, analytics, or related enterprise technology roles.
• Experience supporting data governance activities within data migration, integration, modernization, archival, analytics, or large-scale transformation programs.
• Exposure to governing unstructured and semi-structured content alongside structured data, including mail, file storage, collaboration platforms, and service management records.
• Working knowledge of records retention practice, including retention categories, retention triggers, disposal timing, and the evidence required to support disposal.
• Understanding of legal hold and preservation obligations and their effect on routine disposal activity.
• Experience supporting merger, acquisition, divestiture, or acquired-company technology and data integration initiatives preferred.
• Working knowledge of data governance frameworks, data ownership, data stewardship, critical data elements, data quality management, metadata, lineage, catalog and glossary practice, retention, and governed data delivery.
• Experience documenting data quality rules, profiling outputs, remediation actions, reconciliation activities, issue tracking, and readiness metrics.
• Ability to work with business and technology stakeholders, translate governance concepts into practical documentation, and support alignment across teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and apply enterprise data governance frameworks for acquired-company integration.
• Embed governance into data transformation initiatives, including data migration, integration, modernization, archival, reporting, and analytics enablement activities.
• Build and maintain the data estate inventory for assigned acquisitions, covering structured application data alongside mailboxes, file storage, collaboration sites, chat and meeting content, service management records, and line-of-business repositories.
• Catalog acquired-company content by category, sensitivity, ownership, business purpose, and disposition, and keep that inventory current as discovery progresses.
• Prepare handling recommendations for each content category and provide them to tenant consolidation, application, service management, and end user technology teams in a form they can act on during migration planning.
• Support review of unstructured and semi-structured content for regulated, privileged, personal, and client-confidential material, and document the handling, access, and protection requirements that result.
• Track identification and assignment of accountable data owners for acquired-company data domains, maintain ownership documentation, and flag data domains where ownership has not been established.
• Prepare and maintain approval records for new or materially changed use of data, and for external sharing and third-party access, so the approval trail is complete and traceable.
• Identify data appearing in the environment without established ownership, registration, or approval, and route it for review.
• Apply enterprise retention categories to acquired-company data and content, distinguishing records that must be retained from working copies, duplicates, and transient content, and escalation items that do not classify cleanly.
• Document retention periods, retention triggers, and disposal timing for acquired-company data and archived datasets, and track upcoming disposal eligibility.
• Support defensible disposal activities by preparing schedules, gathering approvals, and capturing evidence of completion.
• Verify legal hold and business hold status before disposal, decommissioning, or archival activity proceeds, and maintain records of holds applicable to acquired-entity data through to release.
• Document circumstances that extend retention beyond standard periods, including inherited contractual commitments, audit and investigation activity, and content with long-term business value, and prepare exception or extension requests where requirements cannot be met.
• Support coordination with service line quality and risk stakeholders on which acquired-entity records must be retained to satisfy professional standards for audit, tax, and advisory work, and reflect those determinations in working documentation.
• Capture jurisdictional differences across assigned entities, including local privacy, data residency, and statutory retention requirements, and flag conflicts with enterprise requirements.
• Support data quality and standardization activities by documenting data quality rules, profiling outputs, root-cause findings, remediation actions, reconciliation expectations, and quality gate evidence.
• Help standardize data definitions, formats, critical data elements, metadata, lineage information, and ownership documentation across acquired-company sources and enterprise target-state platforms.
• Maintain catalog and business glossary entries for acquired-company data domains so consumers can determine meaning, context, provenance, and appropriate use.
• Support data stewardship activities by maintaining steward and owner documentation, tracking assigned stewardship actions, coordinating follow-ups, and helping promote accountability for data assets.
• Assist with adoption and use of governance technologies such as data catalog, metadata management, lineage, data quality, master data management, and data issue management tools.
• Work with IT, data platform teams, and vendors to document governance technology requirements, support pilots, validate tool outputs, and contribute to rollout materials.
• Collaborate with Legal, Privacy, Risk, Compliance, and Security teams to help document data protection controls, classification, access control, masking, retention, and disposal requirements.
• Prepare governance reporting and metrics, including data quality scores, policy adherence, stewardship engagement, remediation progress, issue aging, readiness gate status, and governance maturity inputs.
• Create dashboards, status updates, meeting materials, and issue logs that communicate governance progress, risks, readiness, decisions needed, and business value.
• Facilitate or support cross-functional working sessions to align transformation activities with governance requirements and ensuring data decisions are traceable and documented.
• Support source-to-target mapping, lineage, reconciliation, data issue resolution, and integration readiness activities during acquired-company data transformation efforts.
• Promote consistent governance practices by communicating expectations, maintaining documentation, and helping teams understand the value of trusted, compliant, and reusable data.
• Identify opportunities to improve governance work products, data quality controls, stewardship routines, metadata practices, reporting, and repeatable transformation delivery practices.
• Other duties as assigned.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Data Analytics, Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Microsoft Purview

Collibra

Informatica

Alation

Snowflake

Power BI

ServiceNow

Job description

Grant Thornton is seeking a Data Transformation & Governance Senior Associate to help embed governance, quality, and standards into data integration across both structured and unstructured content. You will inventory, categorize, and document data assets, drive compliance, and support migration planning with cross-functional teams.

The role focuses on acquired-company data, with governance responsibilities spanning retention, privacy, and regulatory requirements, and collaboration with Legal,