Metadata & Data Catalog Consultant

Role Overview

The Metadata & Data Catalog Consultant is tasked with assisting clients to achieve clarity, discoverability, and governance of their data assets. This professional sets up practical metadata frameworks, including business glossaries, data inventories, catalog entries, lineage documentation, and stewardship processes, connecting business meaning with technical data.

Collaboration is key in this role, working alongside business specialists, data owners, stewards, architects, engineers, quality analysts, and platform teams to outline necessary metadata, designate maintenance responsibilities, and implement quality assurance protocols. The consultant may provide evaluations and recommendations for catalog tools, though final procurement decisions rest with authorized client stakeholders.

Core Responsibilities

• Evaluate current glossaries, inventories, dictionaries, catalogues, models, lineage documentation, and metadata management procedures.
• Identify and specify business, technical, and operational metadata requirements and essential mandatory fields.
• Create metadata standards, including naming conventions, definitions, ownership responsibilities, and quality benchmarks.
• Conduct workshops to harmonize business glossary terms and resolve duplicates or conflicts.
• Develop or review catalog entries for datasets, attributes, systems, reports, interfaces, and data products.
• Document business and technical data lineage, linking metadata to models, rules, controls, and authoritative information sources.
• Design stewardship workflows overseeing metadata creation, review, approval, publication, maintenance, and disposal.
• Assist in metadata quality verification, managing issues, completeness reporting, and regular assessments.
• Gather functional and non-functional requirements for catalog platforms and transparently evaluate tooling options.
• Plan metadata migration, onboarding, integration, and adoption for selected cataloging tools or platforms.
• Prepare guidance materials, demonstrations, and role-specific training for technical and business users.
• Facilitate the transfer of catalog administration and stewardship activities to client teams, with clear documentation.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in information systems, library or information science, data management, or a related discipline; alternative combinations of relevant education and consulting or implementation experience may be considered.
• Between 3 to 7 years of experience related to metadata management, data cataloging, information architecture, business analysis, or data governance.
• Proven background in creating glossaries, data dictionaries, inventories, lineage records, or catalog content.
• Experienced in collecting metadata requirements and collaborating with business and technical teams.
• Familiarity with catalog platforms, metadata ingestion processes, or tool evaluation is advantageous.

Technical Expertise and Domain Knowledge

• Deep understanding of business, technical, and operational metadata concepts.
• Knowledge of business glossaries, data dictionaries, and catalog structures.
• Ability to establish metadata standards, naming protocols, and ownership processes.
• Experience with data lineage, data models, interfaces, and impact analysis.
• Competence in metadata quality assurance, completeness tracking, and issue management.
• Insight into cataloging requirements, tool selection, and implementation strategies.
• Experience integrating metadata with quality, master data, architecture, and analytics.
• Proficiency in SQL or similar data inspection skills necessary for verifying technical metadata.

Core Competencies and Soft Skills

• Proficient in business glossary development and metadata standards enforcement.
• Skillful in using and evaluating catalog tools and documenting data lineage.
• Basic knowledge of data modeling concepts.
• Strong facilitation skills for stakeholder engagement and terminology resolution.
• Possess semantic accuracy and a taxonomy-driven mindset.
• Demonstrate curiosity and meticulous attention to detail.
• Experienced in conducting definition and glossary workshops and requirement elicitation.
• Capable of reconciling conflicting terminology supported by evidence and governance agreements.
• Produces clear inventories, dictionaries, standards, and documented procedures.
• Bias-free evaluation of tools to support decision-making.
• Ability to train users and demonstrate catalog processes effectively.
• Maintains traceability between specified metadata requirements and their realization in content.

Preferred Certifications

• Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP), Associate or Practitioner level, especially with a Metadata specialization.