Role :
We are seeking a technically skilled and detail-oriented Data Governance Engineer to join our Data Governance and Management team. This role is responsible for defining, enforcing, and operationalizing data governance policies; strengthening access controls and security; overseeing metadata standards in partnership with the metadata management function; and ensuring traceability and compliance across systems and domains. The Data Governance Engineer will work closely with cross‐functional teams to ensure data is governed responsibly, securely, and in alignment with regulatory and audit requirements. This is a key position for supporting organization‐wide data initiatives, ensuring that business decisions are powered by reliable, accurate, and trusted data, as we continue to build out our data governance and management function within the Product organization at Assent. The Data Governance Engineer is a hands-on role that collaborates closely with partners across the engineering, security, legal/compliance, and product organizations, and serves to solve core governance challenges in our data ecosystem.
Key Requirements & Responsibilities
- Own the development, versioning, and lifecycle management of data governance policies (access, classification, retention, exceptions), implemented as code using OPA and AWS AVP/Cedar and integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
- Implement and audit RBAC,ReBAC, ABAC; coordinate periodic access reviews, segregation‐of‐duties controls, privileged access and contextual authorization aligned with corporate security and privacy governance..
- Author and maintain data contracts (YAML/dbt) to enforce schema consistency, data ownership, and SLAs.
- Maintain a centralized policy register and SOPs for enforcement, exceptions, approvals, escalations, and reviews; provide enablement and training.
- Partner with the Metadata Management function to define standards for metadata capture, ownership, glossary, and stewardship; align policies with catalog workflows without owning day‐to‐day operations.
- Define requirements and drive coverage for end‐to‐end data lineage with Engineering and Metadata Management to support audit, impact analysis, and change management.
- Establish and report governance KPIs (e.g., policy compliance, access review completion, exception closure time) and publish dashboards tracking compliance, data trust and relevant metrics.
- Evaluate and integrate governance tooling with our modern stack (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, dbt) and leverage automation/GenAI for documentation and exception handling.
- Provide recommendations to improve governance practices; ensure alignment with internal policies, privacy standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, PII), and audit requirements.
- Be familiar with corporate security policies and follow the guidance set out by processes and procedures of Assent.
This is not an exhaustive list of duties. Responsibilities may be altered and/or added from time to time to meet business needs.
Mandatory skills
Open Policy Agent (OPA), AWS AVP/Cedar, CI/CD pipelines, RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), ReBAC (Relationship-Based Access Control), ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control), YAML, dbt (data build tool), SQL, GitHub, Python, SQL Server, AWS Glue Catalog, Metadata management, Data lineage, GDPR, HIPAA, PII handling, PCI-DSS
Qualifications:
- 5+ years of experience in data governance, data management, security, or a similar role.
- A degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, or a related field is typically required.
- Hands-on experience with policy‐as‐code using tools like Open Policy Agent (OPA), AWS AVP/Cedar, including authoring and testing policies and integrating them into CI/CD (required).
- Experience administering or implementing data governance/catalog tools (AWS Glue Catalog, Atlan, Collibra, Purview, Alation or equivalents ).
- Deep understanding of metadata and lineage concepts, access control models (RBAC/ReBAC/ABAC), and regulatory considerations (e.g., PII handling, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI‐DSS).
- Proficiency in SQL, Git Hub, Python, SQL Server and experience with BI tools such as Tableau, Power BI, or Sigma.
- Experience with cloud data platforms ((AWS IAM, S3, Lake Formation, Glue, OpenSearch,snowflake) and data transformation tools (e.g., dbt).
- Exposure to GenAI tools and prompt‐based automation for governance documentation and workflows.
- Ability to build and interpret governance dashboards and communicate findings to both technical and non‐technical audiences.
- Strong problem‐solving skills, attention to detail, and stakeholder management.
- Familiarity with agile work environments and scrum ceremonies.
- Experience working with cross‐functional teams to resolve governance issues and align on standards.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
