Specialist, Data Custodian

Your New Company

Our client is a global mining company dedicated to safely producing nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals—critical resources powering the world’s energy transition.

With a mission to improve lives and shape a better future together, Vale Base Metals plays a vital role in modern life. Their metals are found in everyday technologies, life‑saving medical equipment, and electric vehicles advancing climate‑change solutions.

With more than 15,000 employees worldwide, the organization operates across Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, and Japan. They are committed to transforming critical minerals into long‑term prosperity and sustainable development—making this an opportunity to contribute to work that truly matters.

Your New Role

You are a detail-oriented data professional with strong expertise in data governance, stewardship, metadata management, and governance implementation.

You thrive in complex environments and are passionate about making data accessible, reliable, and actionable. You bring strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to translate business needs and governance requirements into policies, standards, workflows, tool configurations, and practical implementation outcomes.

You enjoy working cross-functionally and are motivated to establish stewardship accountability, improve governance operating models, and drive adoption of governance best practices across the organization.

In This Role, You Will:

Data Stewardship

• Serve as the primary data steward for assigned domains, ensuring consistent data definitions, standards, and quality.
• Maintain data dictionaries, business glossaries, metadata, and domain standards
• Lead stewardship workflows including issue management, approvals, escalation, decision governance, and lifecycle oversight
• Define and monitor data quality rules, controls, and KPIs; identify root causes and coordinate remediation workflows with business and technical teams
• Promote data ownership and accountability across the business
• Implement and operationalize data governance frameworks, standards, stewardship models, and critical data element controls across assigned domains

Data Catalogue & Metadata Management

• Implement, configure, and manage enterprise data catalogue platforms (e.g., Purview, Collibra, Informatica EDC)
• Build and maintain business, technical, and operational metadata, business glossaries, metadata models, and stewardship workflows
• Enable data lineage, classification, and discoverability across systems
• Automate metadata ingestion, classification, tagging, and governance workflow enablement where appropriate
• Ensure catalogue accuracy, completeness, and usability

• Operationalize data governance, privacy, classification, retention, and regulatory requirements through standards, controls, and stewardship processes
• Maintain audit trails, lineage, and governance documentation
• Support governance councils, stewardship forums, issue triage, and escalation processes to sustain the governance operating model.
• Monitor metadata completeness, catalogue adoption, and data quality metrics

Data Integration & Architecture

• Integrate catalogue and stewardship tools with enterprise platforms, source systems, data lakes, data warehouses, and APIs
• Support cloud-based environments such as Azure
• Support master data management (MDM), reference data governance, and critical data element management across priority domains
• Ensure secure and governed data movement across platforms

Reporting & Analytics Support

• Enable trusted, well-documented data for analytics, reporting, and AI use cases
• Ensure datasets include lineage, quality indicators, and business context
• Guide teams on best practices for using governed data

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Partner with data governance teams, architects, and business SMEs
• Translate business and governance requirements into policies, standards, metadata models, stewardship workflows, controls, and tool configurations
• Communicate insights, gaps, and recommendations clearly

Change Management & Training

• Create documentation, training materials, and knowledge-sharing sessions
• Support enterprise adoption of data governance processes, stewardship practices, and catalogue tools
• Promote data literacy and best practices across the organization

Education & Certifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Data Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
• Certification in Data Management (e.g., DAMA) – preferred
• Cloud or data governance certifications (e.g., Azure, catalogue tools) – preferred

Experience:

• 8+ years of experience in data governance, data stewardship, or metadata management
• Experience implementing data governance frameworks, data catalogue solutions, stewardship workflows, and metadata management capabilities
• Experience working with enterprise platforms, cloud environments, data quality controls, MDM/reference data governance, and governance operating models
• Experience translating data policies, standards, and business rules into practical processes, controls, and tool-enabled implementation outcomes
• Strong cross-functional collaboration experience

Skills:

• Strong expertise in data governance, stewardship, and metadata management
• Experience with tools such as Azure Purview, Informatica EDC, Collibra, or similar
• Proficiency in SQL and Python for data profiling and automation
• Knowledge of ETL/ELT tools and Azure data services
• Must-have: strong data modeling skills, including conceptual, logical, and physical data modelling
• Knowledge of enterprise and cloud data architecture patterns, including data lakes, warehouses, integration pipelines, and API-based data exchange
• Experience implementing and operationalising data governance frameworks, policies, standards, controls, and stewardship operating models
• Hands-on experience defining data quality rules, controls, validation checks, issue management, and remediation workflows
• Strong knowledge of master data management (MDM), reference data governance, and critical data element management
• Ability to translate governance requirements into metadata models, business glossaries, stewardship workflows, classifications, lineage onboarding, and tool configuration
• Understanding of data lineage, classification, and cataloguing practices
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a dynamic environment

What We Offer You

• Competitive compensation including a variable annual incentive plan
• Participation in a competitive Defined Contribution Pension package
• Comprehensive benefits package (company paid core coverage, health and dental coverage, flex accounts, disability plans and optional insurances)
• Leave for all of life’s reasons (vacation, personal, sick, parental)
• Work culture dedicated to safety, diversity & inclusion, and career growth
• Employee Family Assistance Program
• Virtual Healthcare online
• Online Training and career development opportunities

Interested?

Let's Talk! Email View email address on hays.ca or call Show phone number to learn more. Know someone perfect for this role? Please share this opportunity!

If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career.