Data Governance & Controls Lead

Data Governance & Controls Lead

6-Month Contract | Up to £475 per day | Hybrid (2 Days per Week Onsite) | Basildon, Essex

A large global consultancy is seeking an experienced Data Governance & Controls Lead to support a major data transformation and governance programme within a highly regulated environment.

This is a key delivery role focused on establishing and embedding data risk and control processes across a complex enterprise data landscape. The successful candidate will create the foundations for a scalable governance framework, ensuring clear accountability, effective oversight, and robust control monitoring across critical data assets.

The Role

As the Data Governance & Controls Lead, you will be responsible for designing and implementing a repeatable data risk and controls process that can be adopted and scaled across the wider organisation. Working closely with business stakeholders, data teams, and governance forums, you will establish governance artefacts, controls, reporting dashboards, and remediation workflows while ensuring ownership is clearly assigned and tracked.

This engagement focuses on creating the governance and control framework, rather than delivering full remediation activities or operating model transformation.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and manage a central data risk and issue register, including risk-based prioritisation and remediation tracking.
• Define and implement governance processes for managing data risks, control gaps, and exceptions.
• Build and maintain Jira workflows to manage issues, actions, ownership, and due dates.
• Develop recurring control checks with clear evidence requirements and accountable owners.
• Create dashboards and reporting using existing tooling to provide visibility of risks, exceptions, overdue actions, and remediation progress.
• Facilitate regular governance reviews and stakeholder meetings to track progress and remove blockers.
• Work with business and technology stakeholders to assign ownership and drive accountability for remediation activities.
• Coordinate and evidence the closure of priority issues.
• Produce clear documentation, processes, and handover materials to enable long-term ownership by a permanent governance function.
• Support governance forums and ensure effective reporting into established control and oversight structures.

Required Experience

• Proven experience establishing and leading data governance, risk, and control frameworks within large enterprise environments.
• Strong background in data risk management, issue management, remediation tracking, and controls monitoring.
• Experience working within regulated industries, ideally financial services, banking, insurance, or similar environments.
• Hands-on experience managing governance activities through Jira or similar workflow management tools.
• Strong understanding of control frameworks, evidence requirements, audit readiness, and risk management principles.
• Experience developing governance dashboards, metrics, and management reporting.
• Ability to engage senior business and technology stakeholders and drive accountability across multiple teams.
• Understanding of enterprise data governance operating models and governance forums.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and documentation skills.

Desirable Experience

• Exposure to modern cloud-based data platforms and large-scale data transformation programmes.
• Experience supporting enterprise data governance initiatives, data quality programmes, or critical data element frameworks.
• Familiarity with enterprise data models, data products, metadata management, and data lifecycle governance.