Principal Consultant – Data Lead

About this role

Attain Partners is an innovative consulting firm dedicated to disrupting the status quo to change the world and improve the lives of those we touch. From strategy to technology and ever y where in between, our experts use their unique skills to advance the important missions of education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government clients.

People are at the center of all we do, and that’s why we empower career growth, provide industry-leading benefits packages, encourage a flexible work environment, and foster a culture of inclusion to support the needs of our team. We share a collective passion for our mission and our people. Guided by our seven core values, The Attain Way, our vision is the foundation of our culture—to be and attain the best.

Principal Consultant – Data Lead

Role Overview

The Principal Consultant – Data Lead serves as the senior data leader for Higher Education transformation engagements, with a strong requirement for experience with Ascend CRM and Advancement data .

This role combines Engagement Leadership, hands-on SQL and data development, Data Strategy, Data Governance, and Integration Advisory . The individual must be comfortable leading executive and client conversations while also working directly with technical teams to analyze data, develop SQL, define integration patterns, and drive successful delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Engagement & Client Leadership

• Serve as the primary data and technical point of contact for client leadership and key stakeholders.

• Build trusted client relationships and ensure strong satisfaction, retention, and value realization.

• Provide oversight across project scope, schedule, budget, risks, quality, and deliverables .

• Lead and mentor consultants, business analysts, developers, and other project team members.

• Facilitate executive and working-team discussions, resolve issues proactively, and align delivery with client objectives.

• Identify risks, dependencies, and decisions requiring client or project leadership attention.

• Translate technical delivery activities into clear business outcomes and executive-level communication.

Higher Education / Ascend CRM Leadership

• Bring strong knowledge of Higher Education Advancement data and CRM processes , preferably with direct Ascend CRM implementation or migration experience .

• Understand constituent, household, organization, gift, campaign, fund/designation, prospect, portfolio, and engagement data.

• Advise clients on data migration, conversion, reconciliation, integration, and data quality strategies associated with Ascend implementations.

• Partner with functional Advancement teams to translate business requirements into data and technical solutions.

• Understand the relationships between Advancement CRM, finance, identity, marketing, analytics, and other institutional systems.

SQL Development & Data Engineering

The Data Lead must remain technically hands-on and capable of directly supporting development when needed.

• Write and troubleshoot complex SQL queries.

• Analyze large datasets to identify data quality, transformation, mapping, and reconciliation issues.

• Support source-to-target mapping and migration development.

• Perform data profiling and assist with cleansing, normalization, deduplication, and transformation rules.

• Support developers during complex migration and integration troubleshooting.

Data Strategy

• Serve as a bridge between executive leadership, business stakeholders, functional teams, and technical engineering/analytics teams .

• Translate organizational goals and business requirements into actionable data strategies and technical requirements.

• Develop current-state and future-state data architectures and roadmaps.

• Advise clients on data platforms, integration patterns, analytics architecture, master data, and enterprise data management.

• Help clients define how operational, CRM, financial, engagement, and analytical data should work together across the organization.

Data Governance & Data Quality

• Establish and advise on enterprise data governance frameworks.

• Define data ownership, stewardship, accountability, and decision-making structures.

• Develop data standards, business definitions, and data quality controls.

• Establish processes for:

• Data quality monitoring

• Data remediation

• Data ownership

• Metadata and definitions

• Data lifecycle management

• Governance escalation and decision making

• Partner with business and technical stakeholders to embed governance into operational processes rather than treating governance as a standalone initiative.

Integration Advisory

• Strategy & Planning: Design integration architectures and blueprints, map end-to-end data flows, define integration patterns, and establish technical requirements across cloud and on-premise environments.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with business stakeholders, IT teams, application owners, architects, and external vendors to align integration requirements, priorities, dependencies, and business outcomes.

• Execution & Delivery Oversight: Provide technical leadership across design, development, testing, deployment, and stabilization while managing risks, dependencies, timelines, and overall solution quality.

• Support & Troubleshooting: Analyze integration failures, logs, data issues, and system errors; coordinate root-cause analysis and resolution of production incidents and interface issues.

• Integration Advisory: Serve as a subject matter expert on integration architecture, patterns, platforms, and best practices, recommending improvements that increase scalability, reliability, maintainability, and operational efficiency.

• Standards & Governance: Establish reusable integration standards, naming conventions, error-handling approaches, monitoring practices, security requirements, and documentation expectations.

• Platform Guidance: Advise on the appropriate use of APIs, batch/file processi

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