Sr. Associate, Data Management

About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the world's most successful individuals, families, and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve the world's most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

The Data Management Enablement (DME) team within the Enterprise Data group is seeking a highly skilled Senior Associate, Data Management to join the team and serve as a data management subject matter expert.

The ideal candidate will play a critical role in the product development, operational support, and continuous enhancement of Northern Trust's enterprise data governance platform (Collibra). This role partners closely with Product Owners, Technology, Data Quality, Architecture, and Business stakeholders to ensure scalable, compliant, and user‑centric data governance solutions.

You will assist in identifying business improvement opportunities, analyzing business requirements, and translating them into functional specifications. You will also support the product owner in defining the product roadmap, driving enhancements and solutions, defining user stories, coordinating UAT, and ensuring a high‑quality end‑user experience across the data governance ecosystem.

In addition, you will provide hands‑on operational support to data producers and consumers, including support for metadata management, data quality, attestation workflows, role management, and marketplace adoption.

Key Responsibilities

1. Requirements Analysis & Functional Design

• Collaborate with business, technology, and data governance stakeholders to gather, analyze, and document business requirements.
• Translate business needs into functional specifications, workflow logic, and configuration requirements for Collibra.
• Assess impacts to downstream processes such as metadata attestation, lineage, data quality, and regulatory reporting.
• Act as a bridge between business users and technical teams, ensuring requirements are clearly understood and implemented.

2. Product Development & Roadmap Support

• Support the Product Owner in defining and maintaining the Collibra product roadmap.
• Identify opportunities to enhance data governance workflows, automation, usability, and scalability.
• Write detailed user stories and acceptance criteria in Azure DevOps (ADO).
• Partner with engineering and platform teams to clarify requirements, review designs, and support delivery.

3. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) & Release Support

• Plan, coordinate, and execute UAT activities for Collibra enhancements, upgrades, and new capabilities.
• Facilitate UAT sessions with business users and data practitioners.
• Validate fixes related to metadata workflows, data quality rules, scanning, classification, and role‑based access.
• Support release readiness, including defect triage, workaround documentation, and production validation.

4. Operational Data Governance & Platform Support

• Provide day‑to‑day operational support to Data Management Practitioners such as Data Owners, Data Stewards, and Domain Leads.

• Support and troubleshoot:

• Metadata and role attestation workflows

• Business term and glossary management

• Data quality (DQ/DQM) issues and UAT/PROD readiness

• Role assignments, delegations, and permissions

• Inbox and workflow task escalations

• Partner with Data Quality, Architecture, and Platform teams during incidents, upgrades, and audits.

5. User Experience, Adoption & Training

• Serve as a trusted advisor to end users on how to effectively use Collibra.
• Communicate roles, responsibilities, and governance expectations clearly to stakeholders.
• Develop and deliver training, job aids, and guidance for new and existing users.
• Actively identify friction points and usability gaps impacting adoption.

6. User Feedback & Continuous Improvement

• Collect, analyze, and synthesize user feedback from office hours, support interactions, and UAT sessions.
• Translate feedback into actionable backlog items and roadmap enhancements.
• Ensure enhancements improve usability, compliance, and operational efficiency.
• Support reporting and dashboards (e.g., attestation status, compliance metrics) to ensure accurate governance insights.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in information systems, Computer Science, Data Management, or a related field.
• Proven hands‑on experience with Collibra or similar enterprise data governance platforms.
• Strong understanding of data governance, metadata management, data quality, and attestation concepts.
• Experience gathering, analyzing, and documenting business and functional requirements.
• Ability to bridge business and technology through clear communication and structured problem‑solving.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and stakeholder management skills.
• High‑level experience with Collibra's data model, workflows, and configuration capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred / Nice‑to‑Have Skills

• Experience as a Data Management Practitioner supporting Collibra in an enterprise environment.
• Familiarity with data quality tooling (e.g., Collibra DQ, Ataccama, Informatica etc.) and operational support models.
• Proficiency with Azure DevOps (ADO) for backlog management, user stories, and UAT tracking.
• Understanding of user experience (UX) and user‑centered design principles.
• Ability to partner with IT and business to deliver intuitive, scalable governance solutions.
• Exposure to audit, regulatory, or compliance‑driven data governance environments.

Salary Range:

Salary range is a good faith estimate of base pay. Northern Trust provides a comprehensive benefits package including retirement benefits (401k and pension), health and welfare benefits (medical, dental, vision, spending accounts and disability), paid time off, parental and caregiver leave, life & accident insurance, and other voluntary and well-being benefits. Northern Trust also provides a discretionary bonus program that may include an equity component.

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner, greater achievements await. You will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability is an asset that emboldens us to explore new ideas.

Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to assisting the communities we serve! Join a workplace with a greater purpose.

We'd love to learn more about how your interests and experience could be a fit with one of the world's most admired and sustainable companies! Build your career with us and apply today. #MadeForGreater

Reasonable accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at MyHRHelp@ntrs.com.

We hope you're excited about the role and the opportunity to work with us. We value an inclusive workplace and understand flexibility means different things to different people.

Apply today and talk to us about your flexible working requirements and together we can achieve greater.