Data Transformation SME

Join Barclays as a Data Transformation SME in the Data Democratisation team within Enterprise Data Platforms. In this pivotal role, you’ll help shape the future of data at Barclays by designing and delivering robust metadata management solutions that empower our data democratisation strategy. You’ll play a key part in making data more accessible and discoverable for consumers, strengthening governance frameworks, supporting data product development for producers, and fostering cross-functional collaboration. Your work will ensure that data is well-managed, easy to find, and effectively leveraged to unlock business value across the organisation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Designing and implementing a comprehensive metadata management framework that aligns with our data democratisation strategy.
• Ensuring consistency and scalability of metadata across the organization by defining business, technical, and operational metadata standards.
• Developing and maintaining data contracts and governance policies to ensure adherence to Data Quality, SLAs and data product lifecycle management.
• Working closely with the Meta data and Marketplace product owners to define a cohesive end-to-end meta data solution and roadmap that automates and simplifies onboarding to the strategic data tools, including Alation, BDP, EMH, DBTx, Snowflake, etc.
• Collaborating with various stakeholders, including data producers, consumers, and governance teams, to ensure seamless integration and alignment of metadata management practices. These include business users as well as CDA, CDO, CDAO, CTO, CSO, etc.

To excel in this role, you should have:

• Strong Data Background: Understanding the challenges associated with data in large, established institutions and finding ways to democratise data as reusable assets.
• Deep Understanding of Metadata: Expertise in big data environments and leveraging metadata to make impactful data-driven decisions.
• Problem Framing and Solutionising: Ability to frame complex data problems into easy-to-understand problem statements and collaborate with diverse stakeholders to develop solutions.
• Experience from strategic data transformation initiatives: Experience in driving big data initiatives end-to-end to simplify the data landscape, from legacy data analysis/assessment, to data modelling and data product creation, data governance, automation and orchestration all the way to data discovery and consumption. 

Additional highly valued skills:

• Good Understanding of Data Democratisation: Familiarity with the principles and practices of data democratisation.
• Experience with Data Tooling: Experience in working with various data tools, incl. Snowflake, AWS, Starburst, Alation, DBT, Tableau, PowerBI, and various Data Marketplaces.
• Stakeholder Communication: Proficiency in preparing senior stakeholder communication packs, including problem statements, visualising solutions, defining roadmaps, etc.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

The successful candidate will be based in Canary Wharf,1CP, London.

Purpose of the role

To design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and design and implement solutions that meet those needs and create solutions that balance technology risks against business delivery, driving consistency. 

Accountabilities

Enhancing Data Accessibility:

• The Metadata Solution Architect will streamline the overall process of metadata capture, maintenance, and publication, making data products easy to share by data owners and easily discoverable and usable by data consumers.
• By implementing a standardised metadata management framework, the architect will reduce the complexity and time required for data discovery and utilization, thereby accelerating data-driven decision-making.

Improving Data Governance:

• The architect will establish governance policies and frameworks to ensure that metadata is accurate, complete, and compliant with internal policies and regulatory requirements.
• This role will also involve creating and managing data contracts, which formalize agreements between data producers and consumers, ensuring clarity and accountability in data usage.

Supporting Data Product Development:

• The Metadata Solution Architect will work closely with data product teams to configure approved patterns and templates for data product components, thereby accelerating data product development.
• By building metadata in-line with the code pipeline, the architect will ensure that data products are well-documented and easily maintainable.

Driving Collaboration and Alignment:

• This role will facilitate collaboration between the various meta data teams, including Alation, BDP, EMH, DQ and Marketplace, to ensure that metadata management practices are aligned with EDP’s overall data strategy.
• The architect will also engage with stakeholders to gather requirements, provide training, and promote best practices in metadata management.
• Seek every opportunity to simplify, reuse, consolidate and automate our data processes, incl at the time of Data Hydration.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures.
• Be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. Lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. Train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.