Senior Data & Information Governance Specialist

Role Overview

This position leads the hands-on implementation of enterprise data and information governance for an international organisation, turning high-level policy into everyday practice across both structured systems and unstructured content. Day to day, the specialist works with governance bodies, business owners, legal, security and IT teams to define ownership, improve classification and retention, raise data quality, and embed controls into normal workflows. The role matters because it reduces information risk, improves trust in data and content, and creates a governed foundation for responsible AI use.

Key Responsibilities

• Put data and information governance frameworks, policies and operating procedures into practice, then refine them as business needs and regulatory expectations change.
• Run or support governance councils, working groups, status reporting and action logs so decisions are documented and followed through.
• Convert governance mandates into clear roles, step-by-step processes, standard operating procedures and RACI models that teams can actually use.
• Establish and maintain data ownership, information ownership and stewardship arrangements, including escalation paths for disputed or unclear accountability.
• Improve data quality, metadata, cataloguing, classification, retention, access control and information protection practices, and extend those practices to unstructured information such as documents, records, email, collaboration workspaces and knowledge assets.
• Partner with Legal, Information Security, IT and business stakeholders to align governance controls with privacy, security, records and operational requirements.
• Lead adoption, training and awareness activities for technical and non-technical audiences, and prepare executive-level presentations, governance reports and stakeholder communications.
• Identify practical AI-assisted governance use cases, such as automated classification, metadata enrichment, information discovery, quality monitoring, risk detection and workflow automation, while maintaining human oversight, accountability and responsible AI use; surface blockers, recommend pragmatic fixes and independently drive governance initiatives from design through to completion.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Senior-level track record designing, implementing and operationalising enterprise data and information governance frameworks.
• Deep experience across both structured data and unstructured information governance.
• Hands-on knowledge of information protection, classification, retention, access control and data or information sharing.
• Strong grasp of data quality, metadata, data catalogues, ownership and stewardship models.
• Experience with records and content governance, including documents, email and collaboration platforms.
• Practical understanding of how AI can be applied to data and information governance, plus awareness of responsible AI, human oversight and accountability.
• Proven change management and governance adoption experience in complex organisations.
• Demonstrated ability to create governance policies, SOPs, RACI matrices, lifecycle processes and operating models.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to engage senior, technical and non-technical audiences.
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills, including strong Microsoft PowerPoint capability.
• A degree in information management, data governance, law, computer science or a related field is advantageous; equivalent senior-level experience will be considered.