Principal Data Governance Engineer

As a Data Governance Engineer, you will report to the Director of Data Governance & Strategy. You will play a key role in designing, implementing and operationalizing data governance capabilities that ensure data is trusted, secure, compliant and fit for business use for the company with a focus on our enterprise data ecosystem. This role bridges data governance policy and data engineering by embedding governance controls, metadata management, data quality, and workflows directly into data platforms and pipelines. The ideal candidate has strong engineering skills combined with a deep understanding of data governance concepts and enterprise data ecosystems.
The primary location for this position is in Falls Church, VA; alternative work locations/arrangements will be considered as well, including working 100% virtual/remote.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Design and implement technical frameworks to support enterprise data governance, including metadata management, data lineage, data quality, and data classification.

Support the implementation and management of a common data model.

Collaborate with data engineering and platform teams to Integrate governance controls into data ingestion, transformation, and consumption pipelines.

Collaborate with data engineering to deploy automated data quality checks, monitoring, and issue remediation processes.

Support data ownership and stewardship models by providing tooling and technical enablement.

Collaborate with data architects, data engineers, security, privacy, and business stakeholders to ensure governance requirements are embedded into platform designs.

Support regulatory, compliance, privacy, and risk requirements (e.g., PII identification, retention, access controls).

Define and enforce standards for data modeling, naming conventions, and metadata capture.

Evaluate and onboard data governance, metadata, and quality tools as needed.

Produce technical documentation, reference architecture, and implementation guidelines.

Basic Qualifications:

Must have, at minimum, a Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field with 5 years of relevant experience or a Master's degree with 3 years of relevant experience.

Must have hands-on experience implementing data governance capabilities within modern data platforms such as Databricks, through Unity Catalog.

Must have strong SQL and Python skills and experience with cloud data platforms such as Databricks

Familiarity with data governance concepts including data ownership, stewardship, lineage, metadata, and data quality.

Experience integrating governance with CI/CD and DevOps practices.

Preferred Qualifications:

Knowledge of privacy and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, ITAR, SOX).

Experience with ontology-based or semantic data modeling approaches.

Background in large-scale deployment of data Lakehouse such as Databricks.

Good understanding of large enterprise systems such as Workday, SAP, Salesforce and ServiceNow.

Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.

Primary Level Salary Range: $103,600.00 - $171,000.00The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.The application period for the job is estimated to be 20 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.Northrop Grumman is an Equal Opportunity Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO and pay transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for all positions with a government clearance and certain other restricted positions.

Client-provided location(s): Falls Church, VA

Job ID: NorthropGrumman-R10219607

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2026-01-17T19:55:58