Lead Specialist Governance & Master Data

About the Role

Maaden is seeking a Lead Specialist, Governance & Master Data to enhance the organization's ability to manage data as a trusted enterprise asset. This full-time role, based in Saudi Arabia, focuses on establishing the necessary standards, ownership, controls, and master data foundations to support reliable reporting, analytics, artificial intelligence, automation, and business decision-making.

The Lead Specialist will improve the accuracy, consistency, traceability, and usability of critical data across business functions and technology platforms. Strong governance and master data practices are essential to reduce operational inefficiency, mitigate data-related risks, improve regulatory and audit readiness, and enable confident decision-making within the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish governance frameworks, policies, standards, and decision rights to strengthen ownership and accountability for critical data.
• Align governance practices with enterprise data strategy, architecture principles, cybersecurity requirements, and regulatory obligations.
• Embed governance into business processes and technology delivery rather than applying controls post-implementation.
• Govern master data definitions, hierarchies, business rules, and lifecycle controls across critical domains such as assets, materials, suppliers, and employees.
• Improve master data consistency across systems to reduce duplication, reconciliation effort, and process disruption.
• Define measurable quality rules and controls for completeness, accuracy, consistency, validity, and timeliness.
• Drive root-cause resolution of recurring data issues and track improvements through agreed quality indicators.
• Integrate data quality, ownership, security, metadata, and lineage controls into data pipelines, cloud environments, and analytics platforms.
• Identify and mitigate governance, privacy, security, and master data risks before they impact business performance.
• Maintain evidence-based controls that strengthen regulatory compliance, audit readiness, and accountability.
• Equip data owners, stewards, analysts, and technology teams with practical playbooks, procedures, and governance guidance.
• Influence business and technology stakeholders to adopt master data standards and accountable data practices.

Indicators of Success

• Achieve agreed improvements in completeness, accuracy, consistency, validity, and timeliness for critical data domains.
• Consistent adoption of master data standards and hierarchies across priority systems and business processes.
• Reduction in recurring data issues, duplicate records, reconciliation effort, and control exceptions over time.
• Clear assignment of owners and stewards for critical data assets, supported by documented accountability.
• Improved metadata, lineage, and catalogue coverage for priority data assets, enhancing traceability and user confidence.
• Analytics, AI, reporting, and automation initiatives utilize governed data that meets defined quality and compliance requirements.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Management, Information Systems, or a related discipline.
• 8–10 years of relevant experience in data governance, master data management, or enterprise data management.
• Demonstrated experience implementing enterprise data governance and master data management frameworks.
• Experience establishing data quality, stewardship, metadata, lineage, or data catalogue capabilities within a complex organization.
• Proven experience translating governance requirements into practical business processes and technology controls.