Data Governance Specialist Jobs in Illinois

Grant Thornton is seeking a Data Transformation & Governance Manager to join the team. Approved office locations can be found below.

Manager, Data Transformation & Governance - Position Summary:

Grant Thornton GTech’s vision is centered around enabling scalable, secure, and repeatable data transformation capabilities that support enterprise transformation, mergers and acquisitions, and modern analytics. The Data Transformation & Governance function is responsible for embedding governance, quality, stewardship, compliance, and data standards into transformation initiatives so that data from acquired companies is accurate, secure, compliant, and ready for analytics and business decision-making.

Scope extends well beyond structured data. Every acquisition arrives with records held in mailboxes, personal and shared file storage, collaboration sites, chat history, service management platforms, and line-of-business applications, alongside the structured data in HR, finance, and client systems. Much of the firm’s retention and legal exposure sits in that unstructured content rather than in the database tables. This function is expected to see the whole estate, catalog it, determine how each category should be handled, and advise the integration teams accordingly.

The Manager, Data Transformation & Governance will lead governance activities for the integration of acquired-company data, ensuring governance principles are built into data migration, integration, modernization, archival, and analytics enablement efforts. The role commonly serves as, or directly supports, the assigned steward for integration data domains, carrying day-to-day responsibility for governance, quality, metadata, and compliant use within that scope. It partners with business leaders, data owners and stewards, Data & Analytics, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Privacy, Legal and Risk, records and retention stakeholders, service line quality groups, application teams, and implementation partners to define governance scope, establish quality and control expectations, support data readiness, and ensure transformation initiatives deliver trustworthy, governed, and usable data assets.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Apply and extend enterprise data governance frameworks to acquired-company integration, covering standards, roles, ownership expectations, stewardship routines, escalation paths, and performance metrics, and adapt them to entity-specific circumstances without departing from firm requirements.
• Embed governance requirements into data transformation initiatives, including data migration, integration, modernization, archival, reporting, and analytics enablement activities.
• Establish and maintain a view of the full data estate for each acquisition, spanning structured application data alongside mailboxes, file storage, collaboration sites, chat and meeting content, service management records, and line-of-business repositories.
• Catalog acquired-company content by category, sensitivity, ownership, business purpose, and disposition, and maintain that inventory as the authoritative reference for integration planning.
• Advise tenant consolidation, application, infrastructure, service management, and end user technology teams on how each category of content should be handled during migration, including what moves, what is archived, what is left behind, and what must be preserved in place pending further review.
• Assess unstructured and semi-structured content for regulated, privileged, personal, and client-confidential material, and define handling, access, and protection requirements before that content is moved or made broadly accessible.
• Drive identification and assignment of accountable data owners for acquired-company data domains before that data is ingested, transformed, or made available for new use, and escalate where ownership cannot be established.
• Obtain and document owner approval for new or materially changed use of data, and maintain traceable evidence of those approvals.
• Manage the review and approval path for external sharing and third-party access, including implementation partners and offshore delivery teams, and confirm approvals are in place before access is granted.
• Identify data entering the environment without established ownership, registration, or approval, including externally sourced datasets and content held outside sanctioned systems, and drive it through review and registration or removal.
• Classify acquired-company data and content against enterprise retention requirements and category definitions, distinguishing records that must be retained for a defined period from working copies, duplicates, and transient content.
• Establish retention periods, retention triggers, and disposal timing for acquired-company data and archived datasets, working with accountable owners where no external requirement dictates the period.
• Coordinate defensible disposal of content that has reached the end of its retention period, including scheduling, approval, evidence capture, and confirmation of completion.
• Confirm legal hold and business hold status before any disposal, decommissioning, or archival action, and suspend routine disposal where a hold is in effect.
• Coordinate with legal, risk, and service line stakeholders to identify holds applicable to acquired-entity data, communicate those requirements to stewards and delivery teams, and track them through to release.
• Identify circumstances that extend retention beyond standard periods, including inherited contractual commitments, audit and investigation activity, and content with long-term business or historical value, and manage the documented exception or extension path where requirements cannot be met.
• Coordinate with service line quality and risk stakeholders to determine which acquired-entity records must be retained to satisfy professional standards for audit, tax, and advisory work, and reflect those determinations in migration and archival plans.
• Account for jurisdictional differences across the acquisition portfolio, including local privacy, data residency, and statutory retention requirements, and reconcile them against enterprise requirements where they conflict.
• Drive data quality and standardization by defining data quality rules, profiling approaches, root-cause analysis routines, remediation plans, reconciliation expectations, and quality gates across integration workstreams.
• Standardize data definitions, formats, critical data elements, metadata, lineage, and ownership expectations across acquired-company sources and enterprise target-state platforms.
• Maintain catalog and business glossary content for acquired-company data domains so that consumers can determine meaning, context, provenance, and appropriate use without relying on informal knowledge.
• Support data consumers across the firm by confirming that integrated and archived data meets agreed quality thresholds, and by routing new use cases to the accountable owner for approval.
• Manage stewardship activities by defining steward responsibilities within integration scope, tracking stewardship actions, supporting training and engagement, and promoting accountability for data assets.
• Support adoption and effective use of governance technologies such as data catalog, metadata management, lineage, data quality, master data management, and data issue management tools.
• Work with IT, data platform teams, and vendors to define governance technology requirements, support pilots, contribute to rollout planning, and ensure tools are aligned to data transformation needs.
• Collaborate with Legal, Privacy, Risk, Compliance, and Security teams to operationalize data protection controls, classification, access controls, masking, retention, and disposal requirements.
• Monitor and report on governance performance, including data quality scores, policy adherence, stewardship engagement, remediation progress, issue aging, readiness gates, and transformation governance maturity.
• Produce executive-ready dashboards, status updates, and governance reporting to communicate risks, readiness, compliance, decisions needed, and business value from governance activities.
• Facilitate cross-functional working sessions to align transformation goals with governance requirements and ensure data decisions are made with clear ownership, traceability, and business accountability.
• Support source-to-target mapping, lineage, reconciliation, data issue resolution, and integration readiness activities during acquired-company data transformation efforts.
• Promote a data-driven culture by communicating governance expectations, reinforcing consistent practices, and helping teams understand the value of trusted, compliant, and reusable data.
• Identify opportunities to improve governance processes, data quality controls, stewardship routines, metadata practices, automation, reporting, and transformation delivery repeatability.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications & Requirements

• 6+ years of experience in data governance, data transformation, data management, data quality, data integration, records and information management, data privacy and compliance, analytics, or related enterprise technology roles.
• Demonstrated experience applying data governance principles to data migration, integration, modernization, archival, analytics, or large-scale transformation programs.
• Experience governing unstructured and semi-structured content alongside structured data, including mail, file storage, collaboration platforms, and service management records.
• Working knowledge of records retention practice, including retention scheduling, record category definitions, retention triggers, and defensible disposal.
• Familiarity with legal hold and preservation obligations, including how holds are issued, communicated, tracked, and released, and their effect on routine disposal.
• Experience supporting merger, acquisition, divestiture, or acquired-company technology and data integration initiatives preferred.
• Strong understanding of data governance frameworks, data ownership, data stewardship, critical data elements, data quality management, metadata, lineage, catalog and glossary practice, retention, and governed data delivery.
• Experience defining and managing data quality rules, profiling activities, remediation plans, reconciliation processes, issue tracking, and readiness metrics.
• Familiarity with data governance technologies such as data catalogs, metadata management platforms, lineage tools, MDM platforms, data quality tools, workflow tools, or data issue management capabilities.
• Working knowledge of data protection and compliance requirements, including privacy, classification, access management, masking, retention, and internal policy controls.
• Familiarity with retention and documentation requirements arising from professional standards in an audit, tax, or advisory environment, or demonstrated ability to work within a comparable regulated setting.
• Ability to partner with business leaders across functions, translate governance concepts into practical transformation requirements, and drive alignment across business and technology teams.
• Strong project management, change management, stakeholder engagement, facilitation, communication, and executive reporting skills.
• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Data Analytics, Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required; relevant data governance, privacy, records management, security, project management, or cloud and data certifications preferred.

Preferred Experience

• Experience operating in a professional services, consulting, accounting, or complex global enterprise environment.
• Experience with governance and data platform tools such as Microsoft Purview, Collibra, Informatica, Alation, Snowflake, Power BI, ServiceNow, or comparable technologies.
• Experience applying retention, classification, and eDiscovery capabilities across mail, file storage, and collaboration platforms at enterprise scale.
• Experience supporting data archival, historical data retention, legacy system decommissioning, or compliance-driven data preservation initiatives.
• Experience developing governance playbooks, stewardship operating models, data readiness checklists, data quality scorecards, issue management routines, and executive dashboards.
• Experience working with implementation partners, systems integrators, vendors, or consulting teams within complex transformation programs.
• Experience facilitating cross-functional governance forums, data decision groups, or working sessions with business, technology, risk, legal, privacy, and security stakeholders.
• Experience with cross-border data handling, including data residency, local privacy requirements, and jurisdictional retention differences.

Success Measures

• Governance requirements are embedded into acquired-company data integration, migration, archival, modernization, and analytics enablement activities.
• Each acquisition has a current, trusted inventory of its data estate covering structured systems and unstructured content, with handling direction the integration teams can act on.
• Accountable owners are identified and approvals are documented before acquired-company data is ingested, transformed, shared externally, or used for new purposes.
• Acquired-company data and content is classified against retention requirements, with retention periods, triggers, and disposal timing established and tracked.
• Hold status is confirmed before disposal, decommissioning, or archival, with no content disposed of while subject to a hold.
• Critical data assets have clearly defined owners, stewards, definitions, metadata, quality expectations, lineage, and operating controls.
• Data quality, reconciliation, issue resolution, and readiness metrics are defined, tracked, reported, and used to support transformation decisions.
• Business and technology stakeholders have clear visibility into governance risks, decisions, progress, and value throughout integration and post go-live stabilization.

The base salary range for this position is between $136,000 and $200,000. Placement within the pay range is at Grant Thornton’s discretion, and it is based on multiple factors, including but not limited to, job-related knowledge/skills, experience, business needs, progression within the role, geographic location, and internal equity. At Grant Thornton, compensation decisions are dependent upon the facts and circumstances of each position and candidate.