Product Owner Expert/Lead, Data Governance Tech Enablement

Role: Product Owner Expert/Lead, Data Governance Tech Enablement

Location: Bay Area, California. Hybrid

Contract: 6+ months

Job description has been updated to reflect 60% data governance and 40% data engineering.

Position Overview

Work Location: Bay Area, California (candidates must be local to the Bay Area and available to work on-site as required)

seeking an experienced Product Owner Expert/Lead, Data Governance Tech Enablement to drive the adoption and maturity of enterprise data governance for a WWT customer in the Bay Area, California.

This role is heavily weighted toward governance: the majority of time (approximately 60%) will focus on metadata management, business glossary, data lineage, data quality, critical data elements, data stewardship, and the governance operating model, including hands-on support for governance platform implementation and adoption.

The remaining time (approximately 40%) involves coordinating with data engineering teams to ensure pipelines, integrations, and reporting solutions align with governance standards. The ideal candidate bridges business and technical stakeholders to build durable governance practices across the enterprise.

Responsibilities

• Partner with business and technical stakeholders to define, implement, and promote enterprise data governance policies, standards, and best practices.
• Support metadata management, business glossary development, data lineage, data cataloging, and data classification activities across enterprise data domains.
• Support the implementation and adoption of enterprise data governance platforms such as Collibra, Alation, or similar tools.
• Facilitate data quality assessments, issue identification, root cause analysis, and remediation planning for critical data assets, in partnership with Data Owners, Data Stewards, Privacy, and Security teams.
• Support governance processes for master data, reference data, metadata, and critical data elements, and develop governance documentation, standards, and operating procedures.
• Support governance councils, working sessions, and stakeholder communications, including regulatory compliance, audit readiness, and risk management activities.
• Collaborate with data engineering teams to ensure data pipelines, integrations, and reporting solutions align with governance standards and enterprise policies.
• Partner with data engineering to define, validate, and monitor data quality rules and controls embedded within pipelines and integration workflows.
• Review data pipeline, integration, and reporting solution designs with engineering teams to confirm alignment with metadata, lineage, and classification requirements.
• Work with engineering teams to prioritize and remediate data quality issues surfaced through governance assessments, ensuring fixes are reflected in downstream pipelines and reporting.

Qualifications

Required

• 8+ years of experience in Data Governance, Data Management, Metadata Management, Data Quality, or Enterprise Data Management.
• Experience implementing enterprise data governance frameworks, policies, standards, and stewardship processes.
• Experience working with metadata management and data catalog tools such as Collibra, Alation, or comparable platforms.
• Understanding of data quality, metadata, lineage, business glossary, master data management, and reference data concepts.
• Experience collaborating with Data Owners, Data Stewards, Privacy, Security, Architecture, and Engineering teams.
• Working knowledge of SQL and data analysis techniques to support data quality and governance activities.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to bridge business and technical teams.
• Must be local to the Bay Area, California, and available to work on-site as required. Preferred:
• Experience supporting enterprise governance initiatives within utilities or other regulated industries.
• Familiarity with cloud data platforms such as Snowflake, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Knowledge of DAMA DMBOK, DCAM, or other data governance frameworks.
• Experience with regulatory compliance, privacy, and audit initiatives.
• CDMP or other data governance certifications.

Tools and Technologies

• Governance Platforms: Collibra, Alation
• Data Quality: Informatica DQ, Great Expectations
• Metadata & Lineage: Business Glossary, Data Catalog, Data Lineage
• Cloud/Data Platforms: Snowflake, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
• Languages: SQL, Python (for analysis and profiling)
• Reporting: Power BI, Tableau (preferred)