Data Governance - Unity Catalog

Data Governance Catalog Steward (Unity Catalog + Alation) / Platform Stewardship

📍 Hybrid (Des Moines Metro Area - T/W/Th)

📅 Contract 12+ months

🤝 Long-term opportunity supporting enterprise data governance initiatives

Role Summary

Own end‑to‑end metadata completeness and governance adherence from post-ingestion in Databricks (raw→refined→presentation) to business consumption in Alation. This is a hands‑on, platform‑focused role that embeds with platform engineering and business teams, ensures certifiable data products, and keeps the catalog accurate and usable.

Top Outcomes (What Success Looks Like)

• Unity Catalog is standardized and reliable for data product growth (naming, tags, ownership, lineage conventions consistently applied).
• Metadata flows cleanly into Alation; priority data products are certified, owned, and discoverable with complete business context.
• Clear, business‑friendly governance standards are published and followed across teams.

Core Responsibilities (People + Platforms)

• Embed with Databricks platform and ingestion/modeling teams; attend build/prioritization meetings; guide teams to follow platform governance standards.
• Publish and maintain Unity Catalog standards (with emphasis on Refined→Presentation product readiness); monitor UC activity for adherence and remediate drift.
• Ensure all certifiable data products have complete ownership, assignments, and required metadata in Unity Catalog and Alation.
• Monitor and maintain UC→Alation metadata flow; resolve connection issues; ensure domain tags, owners, and governance attributes transfer and remain complete.
• Track catalog completeness/adoption metrics (e.g., Power BI over Snowflake/Databricks sources) and report progress to stakeholders.
• Audit catalog content for business completeness (domain, product, process linkage, business glossary alignment); drive remediation with Domain Stewards.
• Partner with the Data Governance Lead to define and evolve business‑friendly governance standards, policies, and playbooks; communicate updates to teams.
• Collaborate closely with the Business Domain Steward to align certification, deprecation, and status changes across UC and Alation.

Must‑Have Experience

• Deep, hands‑on Databricks Unity Catalog experience (RBAC/policies, tags, lineage, naming conventions, productization across bronze/silver/gold).
• Proven metadata management experience and familiarity with enterprise data catalogs (Alation experience preferred; strong equivalents acceptable).
• Experience working with platform/ingestion teams and translating governance requirements into day‑to‑day engineering practices.
• Ability to build/maintain adoption and completeness dashboards (e.g., Power BI) and drive follow‑through with technical teams.

Nice‑to‑Have

• Prior experience standing up or maturing Unity Catalog and/or Alation at scale.
• Exposure to data product / data mesh operating models and certification workflows.