Data Catalog Delivery Lead

The Data Catalog Delivery Lead plays a critical role in driving the execution and operational delivery of the Enterprise Data Catalog in a consistent, scalable, and audit-ready manner. This role is responsible for governing execution across the Data Catalog Team, ensuring alignment between Product, Metadata Governance, and Operations. This role is accountable for scaling the Data Catalog to achieve targeted adoption, metadata coverage, and business usage outcomes. This role partners closely with Product Management, Metadata Governance, and Engagement teams to ensure alignment between design intent, delivery execution, and enterprise outcomes. 

The Data Catalog Delivery Lead owns end-to-end delivery execution within the Data Catalog team, ensuring design, development, and testing are aligned and production-ready. This role also establishes and reinforces design quality standards across the Data Catalog team, ensuring all solutions meet enterprise expectations for scalability, governance, and usability. While not the primary design authority, the Data Catalog Delivery Lead acts as a critical reviewer and challenger of design decisions, ensuring designs are complete, consistent, and capable of operating reliably at enterprise scale. 

In addition, this role applies strong product and design thinking principles to execution, ensuring solutions are aligned to user needs, personas, and intended outcomes ensuring delivery reflects how users will actually interact with and derive value from the catalog. The Data Catalog Delivery Lead ensures that delivery reflects a user-centered, persona-driven approach, reinforcing that the catalog is designed to enable intuitive, high-value experiences for business and technical users. 

Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Own the execution governance model for the Design & Delivery team, ensuring adherence to defined operating processes, standards, and agile practices. 

• Owns audit-ready execution, including traceability from requirements through design, development, testing, and release with documented evidence 

• Own release management processes, including alignment to enterprise change freeze calendars, readiness validation, and deployment timing 

• Plan, coordinate, and own release management processes, including readiness validation, change coordination, and deployment alignment. 

• Review and challenge design decisions to ensure solutions meet enterprise expectations for scalability, governance, integration, and long-term sustainability. 

• Review testing strategies and test cases to ensure alignment with functionality, user experience, and enterprise standards. 

• Ensure delivery activities align to defined patterns and repeatable execution models, reinforcing consistency and reducing variability across implementations, 

• Participate in agile ceremonies, ensures user story quality, including clear acceptance criteria, defined dependencies, and adherence to Definition of Ready and Definition of Done f 

• Own and drive Alation platform capability, including configuration, adoption, integration, and vendor engagement 

• Represent Data Catalog delivery and drive alignment across Product, Metadata Governance, and Data Safeguarding, including resolving cross-functional conflicts 

• Own resolution of execution risks, requirement gaps, and design inconsistencies to maintain delivery commitments 

• Ensure delivery practices support long-term scalability, audit expectations, AI readiness, and integration maturity across the catalog ecosystem. 

• Accountable for driving measurable outcomes, including catalog adoption, metadata quality improvement, onboarding velocity, and audit performance 

Basic Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent relevant work experience 

• 7+ years of experience implementing data governance frameworks (e.g., data policies, standards, and controls), experience developing and/or implementing data governance policy and standards, and experience working with IT and/or business segments on the analysis of complex business processes and data governance needs 

• Proven experience in data governance, data privacy, and data protection 

• 2+ years hands-on experience with Alation required, including configuration of workflows, stewardship models, metadata ingestion, and platform integration processes for data catalog governance 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Proven experience in data governance, data privacy, and data protection 

• Demonstrated experience implementing and enforcing structured operating models, delivery patterns, or execution frameworks across teams 

• Strong understanding of testing strategies, quality assurance processes, and release management practices 

• Ability to challenge decisions, drive alignment, and resolve cross-functional conflicts to maintain delivery momentum 

• Experience supporting audit, regulatory, or compliance-driven delivery environments with a focus on documentation, controls, and evidence 

• Proven ability to coordinate cross-functional teams and manage dependencies across product, design, and engineering functions 

• Familiarity with metadata integration, data lineage, and governance processes in modern data ecosystems 

• Experience working with vendor platforms, including managing support, enhancements, and technical coordination 

• Strong communication and leadership skills with the ability to influence execution discipline without direct authority 

• Ability to identify operational gaps and drive continuous improvement in delivery processes and team performance 

• Strategic mindset with the ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term platform scalability and maturity