Metadata / Data Cataloging Senior Analyst

Job Family:

Data Engineering & Architecture Consulting

Travel Required:

Up to 10%

Clearance Required:

Ability to Obtain Public Trust

The Metadata / Data Cataloging Lead (Managing Consultant) leads and executes enterprise metadata baselining and catalog operationalization, with deep hands-on responsibility for configuring and using data catalog platforms to deliver measurable improvements in data discoverability, metadata quality, governance workflows, lineage, and semantic search. Building on structured metadata intake and validation, this role goes further by driving implementation-level outcomes: establishing catalog operating models, configuring metadata schemas and stewardship workflows, integrating technical metadata harvesting, and improving search relevance through semantic enrichment (e.g., taxonomy/ontology alignment, synonyms, knowledge-graph relationships, and catalog curation practices).

This role also leads hands-on evaluation and selection of catalog solutions (AoA) and supports pilots that prove capabilities such as semantic search, catalog population, and lineage visualization—producing evidence-based findings and decision-quality recommendations aligned to client priorities.

Key Responsibilities

1) Lead structured metadata intake, normalization, and enterprise baselining

• Lead and perform in-person/virtual interviews and working sessions with system owners, data stewards, custodians, and SMEs to capture and normalize technical, business, operational, and security metadata into catalog-ready records.

• Own completeness and consistency checks; drive discrepancy resolution and steward validation cycles; ensure records are ready for ingestion and ongoing maintenance.

2) Configure and operationalize catalog capabilities

• Configure catalog structures and operating patterns: domains, asset types, metadata templates, certification/attestation workflows, stewardship roles, approval gates, and change control.

• Define and operationalize metadata quality controls (required attributes, validation rules, refresh cadence, auditability) and establish an evidence trail for governance reporting.

• Partner with engineering teams to implement integration patterns (connectors/APIs) sufficient to support ingestion/harvesting, lineage capture, and role-based access constructs.

3) Semantic search enablement

• Lead and execute semantic search enablement across the catalog by implementing and curating:

  • taxonomy/ontology alignment, business glossary harmonization, synonym mapping, and semantic tagging protocols

  • search relevance improvements via metadata enrichment and curated relationships (e.g., knowledge-graph style linking)

  • measurement of search quality (precision/recall proxies, click-through, “time-to-find,” zero-result queries, adoption metrics)

• Support evaluation and demonstration of semantic search and discovery maturity (natural language queries, faceted discovery, ranking relevance, and cross-domain linking) as required by client objectives.

4) Lead AoA / tool evaluation and selection

• Lead structured evaluations of catalog solutions (discovery, glossary, lineage, workflow, UX, APIs, security/access, vendor support), including demo scripting, evidence capture, gap analysis, and comparative scoring inputs.

• Produce decision-quality artifacts (evidence logs, comparison matrices, tradeoff synthesis, recommendation inputs) and facilitate stakeholder workshops to converge on priorities.

5) Governance pilots, lifecycle workflows, and federated readiness

• Lead governance and lifecycle pilots: federated stewardship readiness (role clarity, escalation, audit traceability) and data product lifecycle workflows (publish/discover/change control/versioning/SLA/deprecate).

• Support catalog population sequencing and lineage validation approaches that demonstrate traceability and refresh cadence across systems/data products.

6) Delivery leadership and stakeholder management

• Own workplan execution for the metadata/catalog workstream, including milestone management, RAID tracking, and stakeholder coordination; coach junior analysts on intake standards and catalog hygiene.

• Prepare and deliver crisp status reporting and executive-ready readouts focused on outcomes (coverage, quality, adoption, time-to-discover, and backlog reduction).

What You Will Need:

• US Citizenship required

• Must be able to OBTAIN and MAINTAIN a Federal or DoD “PUBLIC TRUST”. Candidates with an ACTIVE SECRE