Lead Specialist Governance & Master Data

About Ma'aden and the Role

Ma'aden, established in 1997, is a multi-commodity mining and metals company in the Middle East. The company is involved in developing the mining industry within Saudi Arabia. This full-time role for a Lead Specialist, Governance & Master Data, located in Riyadh, contributes to the company's growth and the development of its mining value chain.

Role Purpose and Impact

This position is designed to enhance Ma'aden’s capability to manage data as an enterprise asset. It involves establishing standards, ownership, controls, and master data foundations to support reliable reporting, analytics, artificial intelligence, automation, and business decision-making. The role aims to improve data accuracy, consistency, traceability, and usability across business functions and technology platforms, thereby reducing operational inefficiency, mitigating data-related risks, and improving regulatory and audit readiness. As a specialist authority, this role translates enterprise governance requirements into practical controls and clear accountabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish governance frameworks, policies, standards, and decision rights to strengthen data ownership and accountability.
• Align governance practices with enterprise data strategy, architecture principles, cybersecurity requirements, and regulatory obligations.
• Embed governance into business processes and technology delivery.
• Govern master data definitions, hierarchies, business rules, and lifecycle controls across critical domains such as assets, materials, suppliers, and employees.
• Improve master data consistency across systems to reduce duplication and reconciliation efforts.
• Define measurable quality rules and controls for data completeness, accuracy, consistency, validity, and timeliness.
• Drive root-cause resolution of recurring data issues and track improvements through quality indicators.
• Strengthen data discoverability and trust through effective metadata, lineage, cataloguing, and traceability practices.
• Integrate data quality, ownership, security, metadata, and lineage controls into data pipelines, cloud environments, and analytics platforms.
• Identify and mitigate governance, privacy, security, and master data risks.
• Maintain evidence-based controls to strengthen regulatory compliance and audit readiness.
• Monitor adherence to governance standards and drive corrective action for control gaps.
• Equip data owners, stewards, analysts, and technology teams with practical playbooks and governance guidance.
• Influence stakeholders to adopt master data standards and accountable data practices.
• Build sustainable governance capability through mentoring and knowledge transfer.

Experience and Qualifications

• 5-10 years of relevant experience.

Indicators of Success

• Achieving agreed improvements in completeness, accuracy, consistency, validity, and timeliness for critical data domains.
• Consistent adoption of master data standards and hierarchies across priority systems and business processes.
• Reduction over time in recurring data issues, duplicate records, reconciliation effort, and control exceptions.
• Clear assignment of owners and stewards for critical data assets, supported by documented accountability.
• Improved metadata, lineage, and catalogue coverage for priority data assets, enhancing traceability and user confidence.
• Use of governed data that meets defined quality and compliance requirements for analytics, AI, reporting, and automation initiatives.

Work Environment

This is a full-time position based in Riyadh.