Data Stewardship Lead

Vanguard•Malvern, PA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Data Domain Steward is a key owner of data integrity, quality, and governance across an assigned data domain. This role safeguards the accuracy, consistency, and appropriate usage of data in alignment with Vanguard’s enterprise data governance policies, regulatory obligations, and industry standards. The senior steward functions as the operational anchor of governance, bridging business and technical teams, ensuring domain-level accountability, driving remediation and quality improvement, and enabling trusted, well‑defined data for analytics, regulatory reporting, and business operations

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Information Management, Data Science, Business Administration, or related experience.
Minimum 10 years of hands-on experience in stewardship, data management, governance, or related roles.
Experience in financial services or another highly regulated industry.
Proven experience in with operational data governance, metadata management and data quality initiatives.
Deep understanding of enterprise governance principles, data policies, and steward responsibilities.
Familiarity with data best practices in financial services or another highly regulated industry.
Proficiency with metadata management and data governance tools (e.g. Collibra, BigID), data quality platforms, lineage tracing systems.
Ability to perform and interpret data quality analyses; skilled in root-cause analysis and issue remediation.
Strong analytical, documentation, and critical‑thinking capabilities with high attention to detail.
Ability to translate complex data and technical topics into actionable business language.
Familiarity with relational and NoSQL data stores; working knowledge of SQL/T‑SQL or PL/SQL is preferred.

Nice To Haves

Experience with cloud‑based data platforms, particularly AWS, is a plus.
CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional) or similar industry‑recognized data governance certification preferred.

Responsibilities

Enforce and operationalize enterprise governance policies, domain-level standards, and data access controls to meet regulatory, privacy, risk, and legal requirements.
Monitor compliance with domain governance expectations, coordinating with internal clients and key partners as needed.
Act as the primary point of contact for data usage inquiries, data concerns, and exceptions; triage and address basic needs while routing complex issues to appropriate governance, engineering, or business teams.
Support enforcement of data distribution, use restrictions, and domain‑specific policies.
Maintain continuous visibility into data quality across assigned domain; proactively monitor trends, anomalies, and emerging issues.
Assess the data quality fitness of the data for a user’s needs
Lead or partner on root‑cause analyses for data defects; develop and track remediation plans with Data Owners, Data Quality Analysts, and engineering partners.
Validate the effectiveness of remediation and contribute to ongoing quality rule refinement.
Ensure accurate, up‑to-date lineage information for structured and unstructured data assets, including transformations and system flows.
Own the publication and maintenance of domain metadata—definitions, business terms, classification rules, and lineage—in the enterprise metadata catalog.
Support the creation and certification of domain‑aligned data products by ensuring metadata completeness and consistency.
Partner with technology & architecture to document data models, data storage patterns, and key domain entities.
Partner with Data Domain Owners, Data Product Owners, Data Quality Analysts, and business SMEs to align on priorities, quality thresholds, and data product requirements.
Lead education sessions and advisory services to teams on data management principles, governance expectations, and domain standards.
Facilitate cross-domain alignment by collaborating with other stewards, engineering teams, and analytics groups.
Identify opportunities to streamline processes, reduce operational risk, enhance transparency, and improve stewardship efficiency through automation and tooling.
Mentor more junior data domain stewards as the seek to deepen their domain knowledge and data management skills.
Evaluate emerging regulatory requirements, data governance trends, and new technologies (e.g. metadata automation, data observability platforms).
Recommend enhancements to enterprise governance frameworks, domain policies, and stewardship practices, advocating for solutions that meeting domain and client needs.