Associate Director - Data Engineering & Governance

Description:

Role Summary:

We are looking for a Data Governance & Data Engineering Leader to build and lead our data services capability.

This role will be responsible for defining our data practice, leading client engagements, building reusable solutions, and growing a team of data engineers and data governance specialists.

The ideal candidate combines hands-on data architecture expertise, consulting mindset, and practice-building experience to deliver high-impact data solutions for clients.

Key Responsibilities:

Practice Development:

- Build and lead the Data Governance & Data Engineering practice.

- Define service offerings, frameworks, and reusable accelerators.

- Recruit, mentor, and develop a high-performing data team.

- Establish delivery standards and best practices.

Client Engagement & Delivery:

- Lead client discovery workshops and solution design.

- Oversee delivery of data engineering and data governance projects.

- Ensure high-quality implementation of modern data platforms and pipelines.

- Act as a trusted advisor to client stakeholders.

Data Governance:

- Implement data governance frameworks, policies, and operating models.

- Enable data quality, metadata management, lineage, and data catalog initiatives.

- Support clients in establishing data ownership and stewardship models.

Data Engineering:

- Design and implement cloud-based data platforms, data lakes, and data warehouses.

- Build scalable ETL/ELT pipelines and data integration frameworks.

- Enable analytics and AI-ready data architectures.

Business Growth:

- Support pre-sales activities, proposals, and solutioning.

- Identify opportunities to expand data services with existing clients.

- Contribute to thought leadership and practice visibility.

Required Experience:

- 15+ years in data engineering, data architecture, or data management.

- Experience leading data platform implementations or data transformation programs.

- Strong understanding of data governance frameworks and enterprise data management.

- Experience working in client-facing or consulting roles.

Technical Skills:

Experience with modern data technologies such as:

- Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, or GCP.

- Data Platforms: Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift.

- Data Integration: Airflow, dbt, Informatica, Talend.

- Data Governance Tools: Collibra, Alation, Informatica, or similar.

Key Leadership Skills:

- Practice and capability building.

- Client engagement and stakeholder management.

- Solution architecture and delivery oversight.

- Team leadership and mentoring.

Ideal Candidate Profile:

- Comfortable wearing multiple hats in a growing services firm.

- Able to balance strategy, architecture, and hands-on delivery.

- Strong communication and client advisory skills.

- Passionate about building scalable data capabilities.