Data Quality Lead

Primary Functions

Accountable for establishing, operating, and maturing the credit union's enterprise data quality program. This role ensures that critical member, financial, operational, and regulatory data is accurate, complete, timely, consistent, and fit for purpose across analytics, reporting, and operational use cases.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the enterprise data quality framework, standards, and policies aligned to regulatory expectations (NCUA, FFIEC, GLBA).
• Establish data quality dimensions (accuracy, completeness, timeliness, validity, consistency, uniqueness).
• Provide thought leadership on data quality strategy, tooling, and best practices.
• Identify and prioritize Critical Data Elements (CDEs) across member, lending, deposits, finance, and operations.
• Design and oversee automated data quality checks across data pipelines and platforms (e.g., Databricks, data warehouse, reporting layers).
• Hands on test creation, execution and reporting when necessary.
• Lead quality assurance plans to support system integrations, conversions and migrations.
• Implement preventative and detective controls including schema validation, anomaly detection, referential integrity checks, and data freshness monitoring, consistent with the original responsibilities.
• Partner with Data Engineering and QA teams to embed quality gates into CI/CD pipelines.
• Apply working knowledge of Python, Spark, and SQL to design, validate, and troubleshoot automated data quality rules and data profiling logic.
• Own the data quality issue lifecycle: identification, triage, root cause analysis, remediation tracking, and closure.
• Classify issues by severity and risk impact (operational, financial, regulatory).
• Coordinate remediation with Data Engineering, IT, vendors, and business owners.
• Drive systemic improvements, not temporary fixes.
• Shift fluidly between hands on analysis and leading cross functional remediation efforts.
• Participate in governance forums, portfolio reviews, and change management processes.
• Build strong, trust based relationships across business and technical teams.
• Develop and maintain data quality dashboards and scorecards for leadership and/or support the creation of business data advocates for dashboard creation.
• Provide regular reporting on data quality trends, risks, and remediation progress.
• Translate technical issues into clear business and risk impact language.
• Support executive, audit, and examiner inquiries related to data accuracy and controls.
• Demonstrate initiative by proactively identifying emerging risks and communicating them effectively.
• Provide evidence for NCUA exams, internal audits, and external audits related to data quality controls.
• Ensure data quality practices align with the credit union’s risk management framework.
• Define repeatable data quality patterns, templates, and best practices.
• Train data engineers, analysts, and business partners on quality standards and expectations.
• Lead with a continuous improvement mindset and encourage innovation in data quality processes.
• Contribute to the evolution of the data platform operating model and maturity roadmap vendors.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Data Management or related field is required.
• Minimum 7 years experience in data management, data quality, data engineering, or analytics roles is required.
• Minimum 3 years experience in a lead, senior, or enterprise accountability role is required.
• Experience working with vendors and off-shore teams is required.
• Work history in a Credit Union or financial institution is preferred.