Data Governance Manager at Department for Work & Pensions, UK Office/Remote, 12 Months, £Contract Rate

Core Purpose 

The Data Governance Manager will work closely with product and delivery teams to embed practical data governance into day to day delivery.

The role will focus on supporting teams to define and manage their data, building out data catalogues (using tools such as Axon) and ensuring data ownership, metadata and quality practices are applied in a consistent and proportionate way across delivery.

Working within a specific Health domain (PIP, HAS or HDAAP), you will partner closely with product, architecture, data and delivery teams to ensure data ownership, quality, metadata and lifecycle practices are applied as part of everyday agile delivery and release processes, rather than as standalone policy activity. The role operates through co creation, influence and assurance, enabling teams to deliver with autonomy while meeting governance expectations.

As a Data Governance Manager, your main responsibilities will be to:

• Embed Design for Data and Maintain for Data practices into agile ways of working and release processes.
• Co create lightweight governance touchpoints with delivery teams that fit existing Jira workflows.
• Ensure governance expectations are visible, usable and proportionate within delivery.
• Set up and maintain the essential governance artefacts required, including:
• business definitions / glossary (v0.1), metadata and data dictionary templates (including Axon), simple lineage and data quality templates.
• Work with product teams to build out and maintain data catalogue and dictionary content across the domain.
• Ensure data ownership and stewardship responsibilities are clearly defined and applied.
• Support the rollout of governance foundations and ways of working across teams at different levels of maturity.
• Maintain and refine governance artefacts based on delivery feedback.
• Support onboarding, show and tell sessions and stakeholder engagement activities to embed governance.
• Maintain oversight of catalogue, metadata, dictionary and lifecycle adherence.
• Support continuous improvement of governance practices without over-engineering.

Essential:

• Experience implementing practical data governance in delivery environments
• Experience working with data catalogues and dictionaries (Axon or similar)
• Strong understanding of data lifecycle, metadata, data quality and ownership
• Experience working with agile teams and influencing across disciplines
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills
• Ability to translate governance standards into usable delivery practices

SC Clearance is an essential requirement for this role, as a minimum you must be willing & eligible to undergo checks. Please note, due to the exceptional requirements of this position (short-term nature of this role and speed at which we require a postholder in situ) preference may be given to candidates who meet all of the essential criteria and hold active security clearance.

Desirable:

• Experience in health, disability or operational data domains
• Experience supporting data maturity improvement programmes

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

Armed Forces Covenant

DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.