Global Data Governance Lead – Data Layer Full Time

Boston Consulting Group
Locations: Boston Atlanta Canary Wharf

Who We Are

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we help clients with total transformation-inspiring complex change, enabling organizations to grow, building competitive advantage, and driving bottom-line impact.

To succeed, organizations must blend digital and human capabilities. Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives to spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting along with technology and design, corporate and digital ventures-and business purpose. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, generating results that allow our clients to thrive.

What You’ll Do

Join the Data Layer Team, a global initiative transforming our organization into a data-driven enterprise! The Data Layer Team builds essential data platforms, products, and capabilities to empower our Case Teams (CTs) and Practice Areas (PAs) with high-quality, actionable insights. Our focus is on creating scalable data solutions and advancing our data infrastructure to drive informed decision-making across the company.

The Data Governance Lead will serve as the strategic and operational leader responsible for developing, implementing, and managing the organization’s data governance framework. This individual will play a pivotal role in ensuring data integrity, security, compliance, and usability across the enterprise while driving data quality, consistency, and maturity through a robust data asset lifecycle management solution. Collaborating with cross-functional teams, including IT, legal, analytics, and business units, the Data Governance Lead will establish and enforce governance policies and best practices that align with the organization’s strategic goals. This role demands a balance of strategic vision, operational expertise, and strong communication skills to foster a data-driven culture and ensure regulatory compliance while enabling innovation.

A central responsibility of the Data Governance Lead is to support and enhance the organization’s commercial offerings by unlocking the potential of underlying data assets. They will oversee the development of an enterprise-wide data catalog that not only ensures accessibility but also provides proactive, context-based recommendations to maximize usability. By aligning governance initiatives with business needs, the Data Governance Lead will empower teams to leverage data effectively for strategic decision-making and innovation, enabling the organization to maintain a competitive edge in its offerings.

Responsibilities include:

• Define an overall vision, roadmap, and priorities for Data Governance Strategy
  • Design and implement a comprehensive data governance framework that aligns with organizational goals and industry standards.
  • Act as a liaison between business units, IT, and senior leadership to advocate for and execute governance policies and priorities.
  • Lead the establishment of a Data Governance Council or Committee to oversee
  • Foster a culture of data responsibility and awareness through training programs and workshops.
  • Promote the adoption of governance policies across the organization by communicating their benefits and relevance.
  • Serve as a thought leader, staying informed about emerging trends and technologies in data governance.
• Data Ownership, Stewardship, and Lifecycle Management
  • Define and assign roles, including data owners and data stewards, ensuring accountability for data assets.
  • Provide guidance and support to data stewards and other governance roles across the organization.
  • Develop and enforce policies for data creation, storage, retention, archival, and disposal.
  • Regularly review and update lifecycle policies to ensure they remain relevant and compliant with regulatory requirements.
• Data Quality Management
  • Define and enforce data quality standards, such as accuracy, completeness, and consistency as well as guidance on metadata (tags).
  • Implement tools and workflows for data profiling, cleansing, and monitoring.
  • Resolve data quality issues and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Data Prioritization and Business Value
  • Collaborate with stakeholders to identify high-priority data assets across commercial offerings & BCG’s case assistant, Q’s needs.and align resources accordingly
  • Leverage advanced analytics to derive business insights and maximize the value of data assets.
  • Create metrics and dashboards to track the effectiveness of data governance initiatives as well as ROI for data assets.
• Data Access and Security
  • Oversee the implementation of role-based access controls (RBAC) to manage data access.
  • Ensure sensitive data is protected through encryption, anonymization, and regular security audits.
  • Monitor compliance with data access policies and address any violations.
• Data Platform Enablement
  • Define and implement standards for integrating data governance capabilities into the enterprise data platform.
  • Ensure the platform supports metadata management, lineage tracking, and data quality monitoring.
  • Drive the adoption of platform features that enable scalability, accessibility, and compliance with governance policies.
• GenAI Enablement
  • Define and implement GenAI-specific data usage guardrails and data governance policies

YOU’RE GOOD AT

• Articulating the vision and specific business value benefits to be unlocked by an enterprise-wide data strategy, whilst setting and implementing the corresponding enterprise-wide Data Governance roadmap, working across multi-functional, diverse teams to materialize them
• Defining and implementing global Data Governance requirements and frameworks, ensuring key capabilities and controls are implemented to enable efficient data accuracy, accessibility and consistency of use globally.
• Leading activities related to the Consulting Data Governance strategy, including Metadata Management, Data Lineage, Master Data mgmt., Data Quality, Data Architecture, and informing Data Product development priorities
• Sharing and adopting best practices, external and internal (across BCG Data Stewardship team) in Data Governance, Data Management, Stakeholder Management, Project Management and Change Management
• Collaborating with functional and technical team members (e.g. SMEs in HR, Finance, Enterprise Services and IT) to prioritize and pursue the business and technical initiatives in the roadmap to achieve a global data strategy
• Enabling BCG leaders to make relevant decisions (e.g. trade-offs and prioritization) to implement the global strategy defined for Consulting Team Talent data
• Developing analytics, frameworks and KPIs to drive a step-change in Data Quality Issue management, Data Security, Data Profiling and Data Governance maturity
• Adopting new technologies like GenAI to maximize data value potential
• Ensuring adherence to relevant data policies, standards, and guidelines, and maintaining relevant Data Governance artefacts across the data domain (for example, the Data Catalog, classification, and data quality standards of data elements)
• Communicating with senior executive teams the importance of the data strategy for the success of BCG

What You’ll Bring

• 10-12+ years of experience working in data-related or project roles (e.g. Data Management, Data Governance, CDO Office or BI & Analytics team). Prior experience working with Consulting data like benchmarks or 3rd party sources and at a global level
• Passion and interest in solving business-oriented data challenges end-to-end, with demonstrated precision and attention-to-detail
• An understanding of Data Governance industry best practice is useful (such as DAMA’s DMBoK & CDMP, EDM Council’s DCAM)
• Understanding of data strategy and management concepts and associated business processes and tools, including Data Modelling, Data Warehousing, and Data Quality
• Strong customer and business focus with demonstrated ability to form effective working relationships and resolve conflicts
• Hands-on experience using Data Governance tools such as Data Catalogs and Data Quality Tools, preferably in the context of GenAI readiness
• Solid understanding of Consulting data constructs and domains (e.g. structured and unstructured data), data technologies (e.g., Snowflake) and core transactional systems (e.g., SharePoint) will be beneficial
• The ideal candidate will have a goal-oriented mindset and enjoy working with cross-functional teams to deliver Data Governance capabilities and support exceptional Data Products
• Strong communication skills with proven experience in stakeholder engagement (including senior business and technical teams) and the ability to showcase the business benefits of Data Governance.
• Bachelor’s or higher degree, preferably in computer science, mathematics, statistics, or related fields.

Who You’ll Work With

• BCG Global Consulting Practice Areas (Functional & Industry) and Data teams: the Data Product Portfolio, Data Governance CoE, Master Data Mgmt., Enterprise Data Modelling, and Data Product development teams
• BCG IT . click apply for full job details