HR Data Architecture & Governance Lead - 18-24 Month Project

Role Description

The HR Data Architecture & Governance role sits within the Human Resources Information Systems function.

This role is accountable for defining and governing the structure, standards, and usability of HR data to ensure people data is trusted, well-controlled, and fit for downstream consumption across enterprise platforms, analytics environments, and regulatory use cases. 

Role Objectives

Provide leadership and accountability for HR data architecture, data governance, and data quality, ensuring people data is structured, standardized, and governed to support compliant, scalable, and consistent downstream consumption. 

HR Data Architecture

• Define and maintain the HR enterprise data architecture, including conceptual, logical, and business data models for core people data domains (employee, organization, job, position, compensation, talent, contingent workforce). 
• Establish and govern canonical HR data models that serve as the authoritative foundation for downstream consumption across enterprise platforms. 
• Define system-of-record, system-of-maintenance, and system-of-consumption designations for HR data elements, ensuring clarity of ownership and accountability. 
• Maintain standardized HR data structures, hierarchies, and reference data (e.g., org structures, job families, cost centers, location codes) to ensure consistency across consuming systems. 
• Ensure HR data architecture aligns with enterprise data models and supports cross-functional use cases with Finance, Risk, Compliance, and enterprise analytics teams. 

Downstream Data Consumption & Design

• Design and govern HR data to be consumption-ready, ensuring it can be reliably used by downstream systems such as enterprise data platforms, analytics tools, planning systems, and regulatory processes. 
• Define and maintain data contracts for HR data outputs, specifying structure, definitions, granularity, refresh frequency, permissible use, and data quality expectations. 
• Ensure HR data is modeled at the appropriate level of detail and aggregation to support multiple downstream use cases without rework or local reinterpretation. 
• Establish standards for derived, calculated, and enriched HR data elements, ensuring consistent logic and transparency for downstream consumers. 
• Partner with enterprise data and analytics teams to ensure HR data integrates cleanly into semantic layers, curated data sets, and enterprise data products. 
• Ensure privacy, confidentiality, and data minimization principles are embedded into HR data structures to support compliant downstream use, including role-based access and sensitivity classification. 
• Act as the escalation point for downstream data consumption issues related to definition mismatches, structural inconsistencies, or inappropriate use of HR data. 
• Partner and contribute to data migration activities. 

Data Governance & Stewardship

• Lead the execution of HR data governance, ensuring HR meets enterprise data governance standards and regulatory expectations. 
• Define and oversee HR data ownership and stewardship models, including decision rights, issue management, and escalation paths. 
• Ensure governance processes align with enterprise CDO guidance, internal control frameworks, and industry best practices. 
• Promote disciplined use of approved HR data definitions and standards across all consuming functions. 
• Maintain HR data governance artifacts within the enterprise data governance platform (e.g., Collibra), including ownership, lineage, and usage context. 

Data Quality Management

• Establish inventories of critical HR data elements and downstream data products. 
• Define and monitor data quality controls and KPIs aligned to downstream dependency and business criticality. 
• Ensure data quality issues impacting downstream systems are prioritized, root-caused, and remediated. 
• Provide senior HR leadership with clear visibility into data quality risks and impacts related to downstream consumption. 

Regulatory & Risk Alignment

• Ensure HR data architecture and governance practices support regulatory, audit, and risk requirements related to workforce data. 
• Serve as HR’s subject matter expert on people data structure, lineage, and usage in regulatory inquiries and audits. 
• Partner with Risk, Compliance, Privacy, and enterprise data teams to ensure downstream use of HR data is appropriate and controlled. 

Skills

• Deep expertise in data architecture, data modeling, and data governance, with a strong focus on consumption-oriented design. 
• Ability to translate HR concepts into clear, structured, and standardized data constructs. 
• Strong influencing skills across HR, enterprise data, analytics, and control functions. 
• Excellent communication skills, particularly in explaining data structures and standards to senior, non-technical stakeholders. 
• High level of discretion and integrity in handling sensitive employee data. 

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred (Data Management, Information Systems, HR, Business, or related field). 
• 10+ years of experience in data architecture, data governance, people data, or enterprise data management. 
• Strong understanding of HR data domains within large, complex organizations. 

Experience

• Demonstrated experience designing canonical data models and data standards for downstream consumption. 
• Experience defining data contracts, lineage, quality controls, and governance processes. 
• Experience working with enterprise data platforms and governance tooling (e.g., Collibra or equivalent). 
• Experience operating in regulated or highly controlled environments preferred. 

Additional Requirements