Sr. Advisory Consultant, Data Governance/MDM

phData · United States

Apply on the company website

As a Sr. Advisory Consultant, focused on bringing Master Data Management recommendations and solutions to life, you'll help clients design and operationalize MDM programs that treat their most critical data as a strategic asset. This is a hands-on consulting role focused on building end-to-end MDM processes, defining match, merge, and survivorship rules, and enabling the tools and workflows clients need to sustain high-quality, trusted master data.

Core Responsibilities

MDM Strategy and Process Design

• Gather and document business requirements for MDM design, including data domains, ownership, governance boundaries, and decision rights.
• Map stakeholders and decision rights across the client organization, and navigate the politics and competing priorities that determine whether governance decisions actually hold.
• Own the executive sponsor relationship — establishing steering committee cadence, keeping sponsors engaged, and escalating directly if sponsorship disengages.
• Build the business case for MDM scope, tying recommendations to the revenue, cost, or risk outcomes the executive sponsor cares about.
• Support the design of tailored MDM programs with recommendations on end-to-end workflows, ingress and egress data flows, team structure, and scope.
• Collaborate with data engineers, analysts, and business owners to embed MDM processes into daily workflows, platform pipelines, and modeling practices.
• Apply data quality processes such as profiling, monitoring, and issue management to ensure rules are practical and adopted.
• Own the design of data stewardship roles — validating that stewards have real allocated capacity, a clear mandate, and performance incentives, not just a title — alongside access controls, privacy, and compliance with regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.).

Match, Merge, and Survivorship

• Partner with business teams to draft and maintain business rules governing match, merge, and survivorship logic for master data entities.
• Define and document matching criteria and thresholds tailored to the client's data landscape and business requirements.
• Establish survivorship rules that determine which record attributes are promoted to the golden record based on source system trust and business priority.
• Support testing and validation of match, merge, and survivorship configurations in client environments.
• Bring a modern perspective on MDM operating model design and rollout.

Tool Enablement & Adoption

• Evaluate and recommend MDM tooling options based on client requirements, data volumes, and existing technology landscape.
• Translate MDM design decisions into clear specifications for technical resources to configure and build within MDM and DQ tools (e.g., Semarchy, Informatica, Reltio, or equivalent), and validate the build against those specifications.
• Leverage AI-assisted features in modern tools (auto-classification, definition drafting, similarity matching, lineage discovery) to accelerate MDM execution.
• Facilitate MDM working groups and coach client staff on stewardship practices to drive alignment and sustainable data ownership.
• Communicate MDM concepts in clear business language; prepare training materials and adoption guides for executive and cross-functional audiences.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in MDM, data governance, metadata management, or related roles.
• Hands-on experience with MDM and/or data catalog tools (e.g., Informatica, Reltio,  Semarchy, Talend, Ataccama, or equivalent).
• Experience operating at the program level when MDM is a workstream within a larger transformation initiative (e.g., ERP/CRM modernization, M&A integration), not only standalone scoped delivery.
• Experience leading or supporting MDM working groups or data stewardship councils.
• Knowledge of data access provisioning, integration patterns, ingress/egress flows, or lineage capture.
• Demonstrated ability to define and obtain alignment for business rules, matching logic, and data quality controls.
• Strong communication skills: able to facilitate workshops, write clear business documentation, and present to mixed audiences.
• Experience mentoring or developing other consultants.
• Experience supporting scoping, SOW development, and effort estimation for consulting engagements.
• Familiarity with governance operating models and stewardship practices.
• Knowledge of privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and how governance practices support compliance.
• Willingness to travel up to 50% per month when required by our clients.

Preferred Skills

• Hands-on experience with Semarchy specifically.
• Experience leading full MDM engagements end-to-end as the primary client-facing owner, directing technical resources and business analysts.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, or related field (or equivalent work experience).

More jobs at phData