Associate Director of Data Quality Solutions

About Kirkland & Ellis

At Kirkland & Ellis, we are united in our ambition and drive to move forward. We share core values that help us achieve excellence: collaboration, talent empowerment, service, inclusion, respect and gratitude. Our people are our greatest asset, and we invest in the brightest talent and encourage a diversity of perspectives and strengths to create dynamic teams that operate at the pinnacle of their field. Our talented professionals show up every day knowing they will engage in meaningful work, continuous learning and professional development.

As one of the world's leading law firms, we serve a broad range of clients with market-leading practices in private equity, M&A and other complex corporate transactions; investment fund formation and alternative asset management; restructurings; high-stakes commercial and intellectual property litigation; and government, regulatory and internal investigations. We handle the most complicated and sophisticated legal matters because we don't just meet industry standards, we create them. We bring innovation and entrepreneurialism to every engagement and, as a result, have long-standing client relationships with leading global corporations and financial sponsors. With 6,500 employees (including 3,500 lawyers) operating from 20 offices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, we are one of the largest law firms in the world and a top financial performer.

Essential Job Functions

The Associate Director of Data Quality Solutions will play a critical data capability enablement role within the newly formed Data Governance Solutions group. This group serves as the technology enablement partner (defining the "How") of the business data governance team (defining the "What").

This individual will be accountable for the configuration, deployment and operationalization of data profiling, quality monitoring and reporting platforms and tools at the firm. They will work closely with the business data governance team to proactively identify high-risk / high-business value data quality monitoring opportunities and implement appropriate solutions.

The Associate Director of Data Quality Solutions will also enable platforms and technical processes to support the business data governance team in the design, pilot, refinement and scaling of an enterprise data issue management and remediation framework. This individual will serve as the data quality product owner for the enterprise and be accountable for the overall administration of the toolset(s) including functional and technical configuration, on-going operations, maintenance, and enhancement. This individual will be expected to curate and deliver product demos and awareness sessions in support of organizational data literacy and change management efforts driven by the business data governance team.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS (This list is not exhaustive and may be supplemented and changed as necessary.)

Overall Data Issue Management & Quality Monitoring Product Management accountabilities

• Contribute towards the evaluation and selection of future-state data quality management platform(s)
• Lead the platform functional and technical configuration to address requirements as defined by the business data governance team such as UI configuration and customization, enablement of workflows, access controls, notifications, etc.
• Manage user administration activities such as account setup, role-based permissions, etc.
• Coordinate with internal IT stakeholders to manage connectivity/access to and integration with cloud and on-prem enterprise applications and data assets as well as other data governance platforms
• Develop and maintain the Data Quality product evolution roadmap and target-state solution architecture that serves as the north star for incrementally delivering automation capabilities across the enterprise
• Support the business data governance team in organizational data literacy and change management efforts by setting up environments, tailoring content and conducting demos / roadshows
• Own the coordination and communication with vendor(s) to prioritize and drive implementation product enhancements, bug fixes, etc.
• Work with the business data governance team to define operational and performance SLAs and implement mechanisms to monitor compliance

Operational responsibilities - Data Quality Monitoring

• Work with the business data governance team to collect and confirm DQ measurement requirements (data element scope, data quality conditions, measurement points, thresholds, etc.), translate them into technical data quality design artifacts and drive their implementation in the DQ tool
• Assess the data and application landscape to proactively identify high priority / high business value data profiling and quality monitoring opportunities
• Execute technical data profiling and quality monitoring rules against data assets to identify data inconsistencies and gaps
• Develop data standardization, enrichment and remediation recommendations and action plans
• Work with the business data governance team to collect and confirm DQ visualization and reporting requirements and drive their implementation
• Develop and implement a services model (intake, scope & size, schedule, implement, etc.) to systematically engage with business, technology and PMO partners and deliver data profiling and quality monitoring outcomes
• Develop and/or lead change managemnt efforts across all phases of projects and initiatives to drive the Firm's cultureof continuouns improvement

Operational responsibilities - Data Issue Management

• Work with the business data governance team to support the design and documentation of an end-to-end enterprise data issue management process

• Support the business data governance team to execute on a strategy to pilot, validate, refine, scale and drive adoption of the target-state process
• Support discussions with impacted data stakeholders to raise, validate, assess for impact, triage, and prioritize data issues
• Drive remediation discussions with business and technology data owners to perform root cause analyses and define and implement strategic and short-term / work around remediation plans
• Summarize, visualize, and report on the data issue backlog, remediation status and progress to business and technology leadership on a periodic basis

Qualifications & Requirements

Education, Work Experience, Skills

Required:

• Bachelor's or master's degree, preferably, in data analytics, computer science, engineering, information sciences or equivalent field
• 12+ years of experience across data governance and quality management disciplines, including but not limited to, data source analysis and profiling, data quality rule definition and implementation, data quality metric design, data issue root cause analysis, and authoritative data identification
• 8+ years of hands-on experience as a data governance specialist or a similar role with data governance and quality platforms and tools such as IBM I Informatica, Talend, Collibra, etc.
• 8+ years of experience with SQL or other data querying methods
• Strong analysis, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills - ability to digest multiple data points from a variety of business and technology data stakeholders, ask the right follow-up questions to separate signal from noise, identify and connect the real dots, craft emergent data themes, and identify contributing factors
• Excellent written communication skills including development of design specification documents, data flow diagrams, process models / decision trees, power point storyboards, executive summaries, succinct meeting minutes, etc.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills - ability to tactfully influence and gain trust of business and technology stakeholders and incrementally drive change, fact-based storytelling with data to demonstrate value of data quality management to the business
• Proven change management skills

Preferred:

• Big 4 or equivalent technology consulting experience
• Data modeling and architecture experience
• Experience with or exposure to data integration and storage technologies and concepts
• Experience with data catalog, and technical metadata / data lineage management tools and platforms such as Talend, Alation, Collibra, Manta, etc.
• Experience executing project or program management responsibilities including development of project charters, implementation planning, dependency management, scope/cost/schedule management, etc.
• Exposure to data privacy and security governance and management processes
• Master's degree / MBA

Technologies/Software

• Experience with data profiling and monitoring tools such as Talend, Informatica, Collibra, IBM I etc.
• Experience with reporting and visualization tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, etc.

Certificates, Licensures, Registrations

• PMP is a plus
• Other industry-recognized data governance / management certifications
• DG platform vendor / platform certification

How to Apply

Thank you for your interest in Kirkland & Ellis LLP. To complete an application and submit your resume, please click "Apply Now."

Equal Employment Opportunity

All employment decisions, including the recruiting, hiring, placement, training availability, promotion, compensation, evaluation, disciplinary actions, and termination of employment (if necessary) are made without regard to the employee's race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth, personal appearance, family responsibilities, sexual orientation or preference, gender identity, political affiliation, source of income, place of residence, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military veteran status, unfavorable discharge from military service, physical or mental disability, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

Closing Statement

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