Global Data Steward

Why we're hiring:

We are seeking an experienced and detail‑oriented Global Data Steward to join our team in Chennai, India, supporting WPP Media’s global Master Data Management (MDM) initiative.

This role plays a critical part in maintaining the integrity of WPP Media’s Golden Master Data assets across domains such as Clients, Media, Suppliers, and other core business entities. The role works hands‑on with AI‑assisted mastering and mapping in our internally developed MDM platform, Matrix.

The role requires strong ownership, sound judgement, and an attitude focused on getting it right — not just getting it approved. The Global Data Steward is expected to actively drive data quality outcomes, challenge poor inputs or AI recommendations, and ensure that master data decisions are correct, intentional, and fit for long‑term enterprise use.

As a Global Data Steward, you will work cross‑region with markets, finance teams, and global stakeholders. A structured, proactive, and assertive (“pushy when needed”) approach is essential to ensure mappings are completed, standards are met, and nothing critical stalls.

What you'll be doing:

• Review, validate, and approve AI‑generated mapping recommendations using WPP Media’s internal Matrix MDM tool.
• Apply strong judgement to ensure AI recommendations:
• Correctly represent real‑world business entities.
• Do not introduce duplication, fragmentation, or incorrect hierarchies.
• Follow agreed global standards, naming conventions, and data models.
• Assess and approve new master data additions to the Golden List across multiple domains (e.g. Client, Media, Supplier).
• Actively drive and push local, market, and finance teams to:
• Complete required mappings.
• Resolve unclear or missing information.
• Correct poor‑quality or inconsistent submissions.
• Challenge, reject, or return mappings and requests where data is incomplete, incorrect, or poorly justified.
• Take ownership of end‑to‑end stewardship flow, ensuring items do not stall in queues or wait indefinitely for market action.
• Provide structured feedback into Matrix to improve AI‑assisted mastering and stewardship efficiency over time.
• Serve as a guardian of data quality, consistency, and enterprise usability of master data.
• Collaborate closely with Local Data Stewards, Finance, Product, and Platform teams to ensure alignment on standards and expectations.
• Enforce and uphold data governance principles, approval workflows, and escalation paths.
• Escalate complex, disputed, or model‑level issues to the appropriate governance forum when required.
• Ensure all stewardship decisions are clearly documented, auditable, and transparent.

What you'll need:

• Experience in Master Data Management, data stewardship, data governance, or data quality roles, ideally in a global or multi‑market organization.
• Strong understanding of master data concepts including golden records, canonical entities, hierarchies, and deduplication.
• Experience working with MDM tools and approval workflows (experience with internally built tools is an advantage).
• Comfortable reviewing and challenging AI‑assisted or rule‑based mappings (no ML development required).
• Highly structured, organized, and comfortable pushing stakeholders to meet data quality and completion standards.
• Strong attention to detail combined with the ability to think long‑term and cross‑domain.
• Confident in saying “no”, “not yet”, or “this needs fixing” when quality is at risk.
• Clear communicator, able to interact effectively with business, finance, and technical teams.
• Experience operating within formal governance and decision‑authority models is a strong advantage.

Data Governance & Control

• Understanding of stewardship layers (local vs global), decision authority, and escalation models.
• Appreciation for auditability, traceability, and consistency over speed.

Stakeholder & Execution Drive

• Comfortable chasing, reminding, and escalating when markets or teams do not complete required mappings.
• Able to balance collaboration with firmness to keep the master data agenda moving.

Cross‑Domain Stewardship

• Ability to apply the same quality bar across multiple master data domains, not just one.

Operational Ownership Mindset

• Sees stewardship as active ownership, not a review inbox.

Proactively prevents backlogs, rework, and downstream impact.

Who you are: