Water Data Steward: Lead Data Standards & Governance

HDR; Baltimore (MD); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employee-owned culture

Job summary

HDR is seeking a data stewardship leader embedded in the Water Business Group to shape how data is defined, shared, and used across disciplines. You will establish standards, build consensus, and promote responsible data use to support governance, automation, and AI initiatives.

You will collaborate with enterprise data teams, lead change management, and mentor a network of data stewards. This is a senior, influence-driven role rooted in HDR’s employee-owned culture and commitment to quality and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in architecture, engineering, data science, business, computer science, or related discipline or equivalent related experience.
• A minimum of 10 years of experience in the Water engineering industry.
• Experienced in development and management of diverse teams.
• Ability to work cooperatively with other leaders, operations managers, technical directors and marketing managers.
• Committed to quality, improvement, and HDR values.
• Active participation in HDR’s employee‑owned culture is a must.
• Ten years of strategic leadership experience focused on growing, developing and leading teams in change management and working with data.
• Fifteen years of overall experience providing diverse data‑centric solutions and services to an organization and the industry.

Responsibilities

• Establish and coordinate a network of SME expertise across the Water Business Group to define technical standards, while ensuring alignment to Water data practices and enterprise expectations.
• Develop and maintain business-aligned data definitions for key engineering and technical terms that support structured data models, reporting, automation, and AI use cases.
• Use your technical network to build alignment and consensus around data processes, priority, and expected use.
• Promote consistent, responsible use of technical data, including access, data quality, best practice for format, and reuse.
• Support governance of externally sourced datasets (access, approvals, inventory awareness, storage, and lifecycle considerations).
• Promote data fluency across the Water Business Group.
• Coordinate with the Technology Director to align data workflows and initiatives to Water BG Strategy.
• Lead change management efforts to drive adoption of data standards, practices, and tools across the Water BG.
• Regularly communicate and collaborate with other Data Stewards, Enterprise Data Science Teams, and Enterprise Data Operations staff.
• Ensure new tools identified for implementation within the Water BG are aligned to data strategy.

Skills

Data governance

Leadership

Communication

Change management

Data storytelling

Education

Bachelor’s degree in architecture, engineering, data science, business, computer science, or related discipline

Job description

HDR is seeking a data stewardship leader embedded in the Water Business Group to shape how data is defined, shared, and used across disciplines. You will establish standards, build consensus, and promote responsible data use to support governance, automation, and AI initiatives.

You will collaborate with enterprise data teams, lead change management, and mentor a network of data stewards. This is a senior, influence-driven role rooted in HDR’s employee-owned culture and commitment to quality and