Water Data Steward & Standards Leader

HDR; Vienna (VA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employee-owned culture

Competitive compensation

Job summary

HDR is seeking a senior Data Steward in the Water Business Group to define and enable data standards across engineering disciplines. Embedded in the Water BG, this role shapes how data is defined, shared, and used to support governance, reporting, automation, and AI use cases.

You will lead a network of SMEs, promote data quality and responsible data use, coordinate with the Technology Director, and drive change management to ensure adoption of data practices across projects.

Qualifications

• 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.
• Active participation in HDR’s employee-owned culture is a must.

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

Strategic leadership

Change management

Data governance

Data standards

Stakeholder collaboration

Data fluency

Communication

Influence and credibility

Education

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

Job description

HDR is seeking a senior Data Steward in the Water Business Group to define and enable data standards across engineering disciplines. Embedded in the Water BG, this role shapes how data is defined, shared, and used to support governance, reporting, automation, and AI use cases.

You will lead a network of SMEs, promote data quality and responsible data use, coordinate with the Technology Director, and drive change management to ensure adoption of data practices across projects.