Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Data Governance Analyst

🎯 Role Definition

The Data Governance Analyst is responsible for implementing, operationalizing, and continuously improving the enterprise data governance program. This role partners with business stakeholders, data stewards, data engineering, and compliance teams to define and enforce data policies, maintain metadata and data catalogs, monitor data quality, and ensure regulatory and internal compliance. The ideal candidate understands governance frameworks (DMBOK, DCAM), has hands-on experience with data catalog and quality tools (Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Azure Purview), and can translate complex governance requirements into pragmatic, scalable processes that support analytics, reporting, and decision-making.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Data Analyst with exposure to metadata, profiling, or reporting processes
Business Analyst or Business Intelligence Analyst who partners with data engineering
IT Audit / Risk & Compliance Analyst with experience in data controls and regulatory requirements

Advancement To:

Senior Data Governance Analyst
Data Governance Manager / Head of Data Governance
Director of Data Management or Data Strategy
Chief Data Officer (CDO) or VP of Data & Analytics (long-term)

Lateral Moves:

Data Steward / Domain Data Lead
Data Quality Manager
Compliance & Privacy Analyst
Master Data Management (MDM) Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Design, document, and maintain enterprise data governance policies, standards, and procedures that align with industry frameworks (DMBOK, DCAM) and regulatory requirements (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA), ensuring clarity for business and technical stakeholders.
Lead the creation and maintenance of a centralized metadata repository and data catalog (e.g., Collibra, Alation, Azure Purview), ensuring business glossaries, data lineage, definitions, and ownership are accurate and discoverable.
Develop and enforce data stewardship models and working groups, recruiting and training data stewards across business domains to own data definitions, quality rules, and access decisions.
Define, implement, and manage data quality rules, metrics, and KPIs; run profiling, monitoring, and remediation programs to identify root causes and track improvements over time.
Establish and manage data access policies and role-based access controls in collaboration with security and IT teams to ensure appropriate data protection and regulatory compliance.
Perform data lineage mapping across systems and pipelines to trace data flow from source to consumption, documenting transformations and facilitating impact analysis for change management.
Conduct regular data governance assessments, maturity evaluations, and gap analyses; produce actionable roadmaps and program improvements with measurable milestones.
Partner with legal, privacy, and compliance teams to operationalize regulatory requirements (GDPR, CCPA, PCI, HIPAA), including data subject request processes, consent tracking, and policy exceptions management.
Translate business requirements into governance and data management requirements for engineering teams, creating clear acceptance criteria and supporting implementation through the SDLC.
Create and maintain comprehensive governance documentation, playbooks, and training materials to ensure consistent adoption of governance practices across the organization.
Coordinate and run Data Governance Council meetings, steering committees, and cross-functional forums to prioritize issues, approve standards, and escalate unresolved conflicts.
Implement and maintain data classification schemes and tagging strategies to support sensitivity labeling, retention policies, and secure data handling procedures.
Drive onboarding and data governance enablement for new tools, platforms, mergers, and acquisitions by performing data inventories, harmonization plans, and integration governance.
Build automated reporting and dashboards to surface governance KPIs (data quality scores, stewardship SLAs, policy compliance) for executive and operational stakeholders.
Lead and participate in remediation initiatives addressing data quality incidents, data integrity issues, and policy violations — coordinating technical fixes and business process changes.
Support master data management initiatives by defining domain models, stewardship responsibilities, and matching/merging rules to maintain a trusted single source of truth.
Conduct data discovery and profiling activities to assess the suitability of datasets for analytics, reporting, and regulatory obligations, and recommend remediation or archival strategies.
Serve as the liaison between business units, analytics teams, and data engineers to prioritize governance requirements and ensure governance considerations are embedded in analytics projects.
Create and run training sessions, office hours, and communications campaigns to increase awareness, adoption, and accountability for data governance practices across the enterprise.
Manage vendor relationships and evaluate data governance, catalog, lineage, and quality tools — drafting requirements, participating in RFPs, and supporting procurement decisions.
Participate in privacy impact assessments (PIAs) and data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) to identify privacy risks associated with data processing activities and recommend mitigations.
Support audit activities by producing evidence of governance controls, policies, and operational metrics; respond to internal and external audit findings and implement corrective actions.
Define operating model and SLA frameworks for data stewardship, data requests, and governance issue resolution to ensure timely responses and measurable outcomes.
Champion continuous improvement by collecting stakeholder feedback, measuring program effectiveness, and iterating on policies and tools to increase adoption and reduce friction.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to help stakeholders understand data context and quality constraints.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap by providing governance input that balances risk, usability, and scalability.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements and governance guardrails that support safe access and reuse.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team to represent governance priorities and acceptance criteria.
Maintain a prioritized backlog of governance initiatives, tracking progress, dependencies, and resource needs with clear business impact.
Assist in onboarding new hires and teams on governance best practices, data catalog usage, and stewardship responsibilities.
Help define data retention and archival policies in collaboration with legal and infrastructure teams to optimize storage costs and compliance.
Facilitate root cause analyses for recurring data issues and coordinate cross-functional corrective action plans.
Prepare executive summaries and presentations to communicate governance program status, risks, and strategic recommendations to stakeholders.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Data governance frameworks and methodologies: DMBOK, DCAM, and practical program design experience.
Hands-on experience with data catalog and metadata management tools: Collibra, Alation, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, Azure Purview, or similar.
Data lineage and metadata modeling skills; ability to map and document lineage across ETL, ELT, and BI layers.
Data quality tooling and practices: profiling, rule authoring, monitoring, and remediation (Informatica Data Quality, Great Expectations, Talend).
SQL expertise for profiling, validation, and data discovery across relational and cloud-native databases (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery).
Familiarity with cloud data platforms and services: AWS (Glue, S3), Azure (Purview, Data Factory), GCP (Data Catalog), and cloud-native governance patterns.
Experience with Master Data Management (MDM) concepts, tools, and matching/merging strategies.
Knowledge of data privacy and protection laws and regulations: GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA; experience operationalizing DPIAs/PIAs and data subject request processes.
Data modeling and metadata standards (business glossaries, canonical models, ontologies).
Experience with data security, role-based access control (RBAC), and identity management integration.
Scripting and automation skills for governance workflows: Python, Bash, or ETL scripting for automating metadata harvesting and quality checks.
Familiarity with BI and analytics tools (Tableau, Power BI, Looker) to understand consumption patterns and tagging for lineage and governance.
Experience participating in or managing vendor evaluations, RFPs, and tool implementations for governance-related products.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills to align business owners, IT, and compliance teams around pragmatic governance decisions.
Excellent written and verbal communication: able to craft policies, playbooks, and executive summaries that non-technical leaders understand.
Analytical problem-solving and critical thinking to identify root causes in data ecosystems and propose measurable remediation.
Project and program management skills to run governance initiatives, track milestones, and manage cross-functional dependencies.
Facilitation and training skills for running councils, workshops, and enablement sessions with diverse audiences.
Attention to detail and a quality-first mindset when defining rules, documenting metadata, and validating datasets.
Change management orientation to drive adoption, overcome resistance, and measure behavioral change.
Collaboration and teamwork: ability to work across decentralized teams and build consensus.
Time management and prioritization skills to balance tactical requests with strategic program work.
Ethical mindset and discretion when working with sensitive or regulated data.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Data Science, Business Administration, Information Management, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Data Science, Information Management, Business Analytics, or an MBA with analytics emphasis is a plus.
Professional certifications such as CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional), Collibra Certified, or governance/privacy certifications (CIPP, CIPT).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Information Systems / Information Management
Computer Science / Software Engineering
Data Science / Statistics
Business Analytics / Economics
Law / Regulatory Compliance (for privacy-focused roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

2–5 years for mid-level Data Governance Analyst roles; 5+ years for senior or domain-lead roles.

Preferred:

3–7+ years of progressive experience in data governance, data management, data quality, or related analytics roles.
Demonstrated experience implementing governance programs, working with data catalog tools, and collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders.
Prior exposure to regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, insurance, or telecommunications) is highly desirable.