Associate Director, Data Stewardship Lead

Job Description

The Opportunity

• Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130- year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare.

• Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.

• Drive innovation and execution excellence. Be a part of a team with passion for using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making, and which creates custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world's greatest health threats.

Our Technology Centers focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our company’s IT operating model, Tech Centers are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy.

A focused group of leaders in each Tech Center helps to ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in growth, success, and well-being of our people, to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging to managing critical emergencies. And together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centers.

Role Overview

The Associate Director, Data Stewardship Lead is a peer-leadership role within the EDQ&DSC (CDAO), working in lockstep with the Data Quality Lead, MDM Lead, and Innovation Lead.

This position acts as both a strategic architect and a hands-on service designer. On one hand, you are responsible for defining and driving the enterprise stewardship operating model, setting data guardrails (privacy, security, GxP, and compliance), and supporting automation efforts. On the other hand, you will act as a critical enablement partner, embedding directly into data domains and initiatives to provide tailored, first-line support, training, and tools.

A vital mandate of this role is establishing, leading, and maturing a vibrant enterprise-wide Data Stewardship Community of Practice (CoP), fostering a culture of data quality, trust, and accountability.

While team leadership and people management are key components of this role, the position remains deeply engaged in hands-on stewardship, operational execution, and active stakeholder partnership.

Role Description

1. Stewardship Strategy, Operating Model, & Priority Products

• Scale Enterprise Capability: Define and drive the enterprise-wide stewardship strategy and operating model, establishing clear roles, decision rights, repeatable workflows, and escalation paths.
• Embed Domain-Level Governance: Support business units to realize maximum value from trusted data by embedding stewardship uplift into commercial transformation initiatives and domain-level governance efforts.
• Domain Stewardship: Act as the data stewardship lead for priority data domains (such as Priority Procurement Data Products), ensuring that business definitions, metadata, lineage, data quality expectations, ownership, access requirements, and usage guidance are clear, trusted, and consistently applied.
• Continuous Process Improvement: Lead the design and continuous refinement of repeatable, scalable stewardship workflows and quality management processes, monitoring performance metrics to simplify responsibilities.

2. Federated Enablement, Advisory, & Business Partnership

• Active Business Partnering: Actively partner with federated Data Stewards across diverse business units to deeply understand their specific data governance responsibilities, localized priorities, and operational challenges.
• First-Line Problem Solving: Act as a proactive, first-line enabler and operational problem-solver for business-aligned stewards, helping them overcome data stewardship issues, access bottlenecks, and workflow friction.
• Tailored Advisory & Support: Provide hands-on assistance, guidance, and tactical coaching to help local stewards easily embed day-to-day governance practices into their normal operations.
• Represent Local Perspectives: Serve as the direct link between federated stewards and central platforms, ensuring business perspectives and pain points are represented in central forums and tool updates.

3. Community of Practice (CoP) & Capability Uplift

• Establish and Grow the CoP: Lead, operate, and scale a strong, connected Data Stewardship Community of Practice (CoP) that nurtures a shared culture of data accountability across the enterprise.
• Nurture & Coach Stewards: Provide ongoing coaching, mentorship, and peer-learning opportunities for stewards to uplift their capability, confidence, and data literacy.
• Stewardship Onboarding & Training: Design, deliver, and continuously optimize onboarding programs, interactive playbooks, templates, and training sessions to streamline steward efforts.
• Enabling Tech Adoption: Accelerate the adoption and effective use of modern enabling technologies—specifically Collibra (Catalog and DQ), Immuta, and Informatica MDM—equipping stewards with automated, simplified capabilities.

4. Governance, Guardrails, and Automation

• Ensure Data Guardrails: Oversee the implementation and strict adherence of data controls—including privacy, security, GxP, legal retention, and ethical data use regulations (HIPAA, GDPR)—in partnership with compliance teams.
• Automate Stewardship at Scale: Identify, prioritize, and drive initiatives to automate routine stewardship tasks (such as validation, routing, issue classification, and exception logging) to reduce manual overhead.
• Track Adoption & Maturity: Monitor stewardship coverage, SLA adherence, and maturity metrics. Collect feedback to continuously refine the central support model and toolsets.

5. Team Leadership and Talent Development

• Lead & Mentor: Lead, coach, and develop central stewardship team members to build functional expertise, accountability, and high performance.
• Foster Inclusive Culture: Build and support a highly collaborative, inclusive, and customer-focused team culture that aligns with business priorities.
• Career Growth & Workload Management: Set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, support professional development, manage workloads effectively, and establish robust succession planning.
• Strategic Engagement: Ensure that while people management is a key responsibility, you remain actively hands-on and deeply engaged in strategic advisory and execution.

Who You Are

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Experience: 12-14+ years of experience in data stewardship, data governance, master data management, or a related discipline in a large, matrixed organization.
• Proven Capability Builder: Strong track record of establishing operating models, designing user-centric services, and building collaborative communities of practice (CoPs).
• Hands-On Enablement Specialist: Demonstrated empathy and experience partnering directly with business to solve everyday data problems and translate complex policies into practical, local activities.
• Technical Familiarity: Deep experience navigating enterprise data platforms. Familiarity with Collibra (Catalog & DQ) is highly preferred. Awareness of Immuta and Informatica MDM is a strong advantage.
• Regulated Domain Expertise: Thorough understanding of data compliance requirements in a regulated environment (including GxP, PII/PHI, GDPR, and HIPAA), ideally with Commercial Pharma or Procurement domain knowledge.
• Leader & Coach: Proven experience directly managing and developing teams, coupled with a strong player-coach mindset where you excel at both leading people and executing operations.
• Communication & Influencing: Superior stakeholder management and executive-ready communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to build trusted cross-functional relationships.
• Certifications: Professional data governance credentials such as CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional) or platform-specific certifications (e.g., Collibra) are highly preferred.

Primary Skills

• Enterprise Stewardship Operating Model Design
• Community of Practice (CoP) Leadership
• Federated Steward Enablement & Partnership
• Collibra (Catalog & DQ), Immuta, and MDM Adoption
• Team Leadership, Coaching, & Talent Development
• Data Guardrails, GxP, & Regulatory Compliance
• Change Management, Training, & Capability Uplift
• Automation & Intelligent Workflow Optimization
• SLA Tracking & Maturity Metrics Reporting

Secondary Skills

• First-Line Operational Issue Resolution
• SQL & Data Profiling Concepts
• Service Design Methodology
• Stakeholder Engagement & Executive Communication
• Business Process Mapping & Workflow Design

Who we are

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

Required Skills:

Business Partnerships, Continuous Process Improvement, Data Governance, Data Management, Data Modeling, Data Quality, Data Stewardship, Enterprise Data, Job Descriptions, Master Data Management (MDM), Operational Execution, People Management, Quality Management, Succession Planning, Team Leadership

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Secondary Language(s) Job Description:

#MSDHYDIT

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

Domestic

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

No Travel Required

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

08/17/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.