Principal Data Strategist

Bixal•Fairfax, VA

6h•$160,000 - $200,000•Remote

About The Position

Bixal is seeking a Principal Data Strategist to help lead the strategy, governance, and quality of data on one of our large-scale federal data platform programs. In this role, you'll own execution of the data strategy for a multi-year enterprise data platform, lead the data supply chain, and drive a multi-phase metadata maturity program that raises the bar for how data is documented, trusted, and reused across the platform. You'll govern how data is promoted from initial ingestion through validated, trusted status, set and maintain data quality standards, and serve as the connective tissue between the platform team and the many upstream source-system teams and business data owners who depend on it. This is foundational work: the metadata and data quality practices you lead are what make it possible to safely expand governed self-service analytics and AI use cases. If you enjoy building durable data governance capability inside a live, high-stakes production environment — not just writing policy — we'd love to hear from you. This is a unique opportunity to make a meaningful impact on a project that aligns with Bixal’s mission of delivering innovative, human-centered solutions. This role can work remotely from anywhere in the U.S. Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S., be able to obtain and maintain the required Public Trust clearance, and obtain a U.S. Federal Government client badge. Bixal does not sponsor employment visas or assume sponsorship of existing employment visas. At Bixal, we support your professional journey, ensuring your experience reflects our, purpose-driven culture and prepares you for future success.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field, plus at least 12 years of related experience.
Strong track record coordinating across multiple stakeholder teams and data owners in complex, multi-system environments.
Demonstrated experience owning or leading a data strategy for a large, multi-source enterprise data platform.
Experience designing and operating metadata governance or maturity programs, including cataloging, ownership models, and promotion/certification criteria.
Experience with modern cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, or similar) and metadata/catalog tooling (e.g., Unity Catalog, Collibra, Alation, AWS Glue Data Catalog, Microsoft Purview).
Experience defining and enforcing data quality standards, including completeness, conformance, freshness, and defect tracking.
Working knowledge of distributed data processing concepts and common data programming or query languages (e.g., SQL, Python, Scala), sufficient to engage credibly with engineering teams on pipeline design and performance.
Experience defining and enforcing data quality standards, including completeness, conformance, freshness, and defect tracking.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical data concepts for non-technical audiences, including client leadership.
Professional certification in a cloud or data platform (e.g., AWS, Databricks), data governance (e.g., DAMA CDMP), or Agile delivery (e.g., SAFe).
Must be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance.

Nice To Haves

Experience in highly regulated federal data domains (e.g., healthcare, benefits, or financial data).
Familiarity with responsible AI governance and how metadata and data quality maturity gate the expansion of AI use cases.
Hands-on experience building, tuning, or troubleshooting data pipelines on a cloud lakehouse platform (e.g., Databricks or comparable).
Exposure to CI/CD, source control, and observability tooling as applied to data platform and pipeline operations.
Experience with data lineage and impact-analysis tooling.
Experience supporting or serving in a Key Personnel role on a federal contract.
Background in federal digital services delivery.

Responsibilities

Own execution of the data strategy for a large-scale enterprise data platform, aligning day-to-day delivery with the organization’s broader data strategy and strategic goals.
Serve as the primary coordination point across multiple upstream source-system teams and business data owners, managing handoffs, ingestion readiness, and shared metadata standards across the ecosystem.
Lead the data supply chain — source onboarding, ingestion, and transformation — and drive a multi-phase metadata maturity program, treating metadata as an operational capability rather than a one-time cataloging effort.
Govern the promotion of data through a tiered catalog architecture (e.g., raw, source, and trusted layers), defining clear admission criteria and applying the model consistently across teams.
Set and maintain data quality standards across the platform, including completeness, conformance, freshness against SLAs, and defect/rework tracking.
Partner with engineering, product, and AI/platform teams to ensure metadata and data quality are sufficient to support expanding self-service analytics and AI use cases.
Establish and track measures of data quality, metadata coverage, and promotion/certification cycle time, and use them to prioritize remediation work.
Communicate data strategy progress, risks, and dependencies to technical and non-technical stakeholders, including client leadership.
Participate in Agile/SAFe delivery cadences, including planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives.
Other relevant duties as qualified and trained to perform.