Lead Analyst

Lead Analyst - Alation Data Location: New Brunswick, NJ Highly preferred or East Coast. Duration: Long-Term Contract Position Summary The Lead Analyst, Data Marketplace & Catalog is the hands-on operational specialist responsible for standing up, maintaining, and continuously improving the Alation Data Marketplace experience for data consumers, producers, stewards, and governance partners. Reporting into the Manager, Data Governance and Stewardship, this role does not own broad data product strategy, medallion-layer engineering, or downstream application development. Instead, the role focuses on the Alation operating layer: marketplace configuration, listing and unlisting workflows, lifecycle controls, operational runbooks, metadata curation support, catalog and glossary hygiene, and the day-to-day coordination needed to keep published assets discoverable, trusted, and governed. This role serves as the Alation technical-business bridge for Data Governance and Stewardship. The individual partners with data owners, stewards, supply chain stakeholders, JJT platform teams, data product managers, and engineering teams to ensure that catalog entries, glossary terms, metadata standards, trust signals, ownership details, and lifecycle statuses are accurate, current, and aligned to enterprise governance expectations. Key Responsibilities • Alation Marketplace Standup & Administration: Configure and operationalize the MedTech Supply Chain Alation Data Marketplace structure, including marketplace setup, role alignment, listing standards, product visibility rules, operational playbooks, and the day-to-day controls required to support a governed self-service storefront. • Marketplace Lifecycle Management: Manage the lifecycle of marketplace listings from draft readiness through review, publishing, maintenance, version updates, unlisting, deprecation, and archival. Ensure lifecycle status, owner accountability, retirement rationale, and consumer-facing guidance remain accurate and auditable. • Catalog & Glossary Curation Support: Aid data stewards and business owners in curating technical and business metadata within the Alation Data Catalog and Glossary, including descriptions, business terms, classifications, ownership, steward assignments, tags, trust flags, policies, and links between glossary terms and catalog objects. • Metadata Quality & Hygiene: Monitor metadata completeness, freshness, consistency, and usability across Alation objects. Identify gaps in ownership, definitions, lineage mappings, stewardship fields, certification indicators, and glossary associations; coordinate remediation through the appropriate owners or stewards. • Standards, Badges & Certification Support: Support implementation and maintenance of marketplace standards, certification criteria, badges, data trust indicators, and governing fields required before marketplace publication. Coordinate with Data Governance and Stewardship to ensure marketplace controls reflect approved standards. • Workflow & Access Process Enablement: Support listing, unlisting, approval, access-request, and issue-management workflows in collaboration with the Alation platform team, JJT, IAM/access partners, data product owners, and governance stakeholders. Document repeatable procedures, handoffs, and escalation paths. • Operational Maintenance & Runbooks: Maintain operating documentation for Alation marketplace administration, catalog curation routines, glossary lifecycle processes, issue triage, release readiness, change control, and ongoing BAU support. Keep runbooks current as the marketplace and catalog operating model evolves. • Stewardship Partnership: Partner with the Manager, Data Governance and Stewardship role to support governance forums, stewardship onboarding, metadata standards adoption, glossary lifecycle execution, critical data/source-of-truth alignment, and recurring review cycles for catalog and marketplace quality. • Supply Chain Domain Enablement: Work with Supply Chain data owners, SMEs, and consumers to ensure cataloged assets and marketplace listings reflect the correct business context, functional terminology, operational use cases, and decision-making needs across supply chain planning, operations, quality, manufacturing, distribution, or related domains. • Platform Liaison & Technical Coordination: Serve as the first-line Alation technical-business liaison for configuration questions, metadata ingestion issues, connector dependencies, custom fields, API-enabled metadata updates, and platform enhancement needs. Coordinate with enterprise Alation administrators and engineering teams without assuming core infrastructure ownership. Scope Guardrails • In Scope: Alation Data Marketplace standup, marketplace operations, listing lifecycle, catalog metadata curation support, glossary lifecycle support, standards/badge maintenance, workflow documentation, governance/stewardship enablement, and supply chain-facing metadata readiness. • Out of Scope: Owning medallion-layer data engineering, building downstream analytics applications, defining enterprise data governance strategy independently, managing Alation server infrastructure, or serving as the primary data owner for the underlying business data. Qualifications • Required Education: Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Data Analytics, Supply Chain, Engineering, Business Administration, or a related field is required; advanced degree or relevant data governance/catalog certification is preferred. • Required Experience: 9 years of experience in data catalog administration, metadata management, data governance operations, data stewardship, technical business analysis, data product enablement, or enterprise data platform support within a complex business environment. • Alation Technical Experience: Direct hands-on experience with Alation Data Catalog and/or Alation Data Marketplace is required, including metadata curation, catalog object management, glossary workflows, custom fields, stewardship assignments, trust indicators, marketplace listing processes, and user support. • Data Governance & Stewardship Skills: Demonstrated ability to operationalize metadata standards, business glossary practices, ownership models, lifecycle controls, certification criteria, data trust indicators, and stewardship workflows in partnership with business and technology stakeholders. • Technical & Tooling Skills: Experience working with data catalog connectors, metadata ingestion patterns, data lineage concepts, APIs or automation for metadata updates, Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow or equivalent workflow tools, and modern cloud data platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, or similar environments. • Preferred Supply Chain Experience: Experience supporting supply chain, manufacturing, planning, source-to-pay, logistics, quality, MedTech, healthcare, or other regulated operational data domains is preferred. • Soft Skills & Operating Style: Strong attention to detail, documentation discipline, stakeholder communication, issue triage, and cross-functional coordination skills. Able to translate technical catalog and metadata concepts into practical guidance for stewards, data owners, and business consumers.