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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Information Consultant

💰 $70,000 - $140,000

Information ManagementData GovernanceConsultingKnowledge Management

🎯 Role Definition

An Information Consultant is a subject-matter expert who partners with business stakeholders, IT, and compliance teams to design, implement, and optimize information management solutions. This role focuses on information governance, metadata and taxonomy design, records and knowledge management, data quality improvement, and building practical roadmaps that align information assets to business outcomes. The Information Consultant translates strategic objectives into actionable information architecture, tooling recommendations (data catalogs, MDM, ECM), and measurable processes that reduce risk, improve findability, and increase the value of organizational data.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Business Analyst (with focus on data or content)
  • Data Analyst or BI Analyst
  • Records Manager / Librarian / Knowledge Manager

Advancement To:

  • Information Architect
  • Data Governance Lead / Manager
  • Director of Information Management or Head of Knowledge Services
  • Principal Information Consultant / Senior Advisory Consultant

Lateral Moves:

  • Knowledge Manager / Content Strategist
  • Business Intelligence Manager
  • Records & Compliance Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead information governance initiatives: define and implement policies, standards, and processes for metadata, data quality, access control, retention, and lifecycle management to ensure compliance and operational consistency.
  • Conduct stakeholder discovery workshops and interviews to map information needs, pain points, and use cases; translate findings into prioritized requirements, roadmaps, and success metrics.
  • Design and maintain enterprise taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and metadata models that improve findability and enable consistent tagging across content repositories and data platforms.
  • Develop and operationalize data quality frameworks: define data quality rules, monitoring metrics, remediation workflows, and SLA-driven escalation paths to improve trust in information assets.
  • Advise on selection, implementation, and configuration of information management tools (data catalogs, metadata management platforms, MDM, ECM/SharePoint, DAM) and integrate recommended tooling into existing application ecosystems.
  • Create and deliver information architecture blueprints, including conceptual and logical models, information flows, data lineage maps, and documentation for both business and technical audiences.
  • Support master data management (MDM) strategies: design entity models, matching/merging rules, stewardship processes, and integration patterns to reduce duplication and improve master data reliability.
  • Implement records management and retention schedules in alignment with legal, regulatory, and internal policies (including GDPR, HIPAA, SOX where applicable) and oversee automated retention workflows.
  • Define and manage metadata governance: ownership, stewardship roles, lifecycle, versioning, and change control processes to maintain metadata hygiene.
  • Partner with IT and data engineering teams to translate business information requirements into design specifications, APIs, ETL/ELT patterns, and integration testing plans.
  • Establish and run data stewardship and community-of-practice programs: recruit stewards, define responsibilities, and support ongoing steward training and performance measurement.
  • Lead information risk assessments and remediation plans: identify sensitive data, access risks, and classification gaps; recommend and help implement mitigation controls and encryption or anonymization strategies as required.
  • Deliver business cases, ROI analysis, and value realization reports to justify information initiatives and secure stakeholder sponsorship and budget.
  • Configure and customize search, indexing, and enterprise search relevancy settings to improve user search experiences and reduce time-to-insight for employees and customers.
  • Drive content migration and consolidation projects: develop migration strategies, mapping rules, cut-over plans, and perform post-migration validation to ensure content integrity and usability.
  • Create and maintain comprehensive documentation: information policies, standard operating procedures, runbooks, data dictionaries, and onboarding materials for new users and stewards.
  • Design and run training programs and communications to promote compliance with information management practices and to increase adoption of governance tools and processes.
  • Monitor and report on KPIs and dashboards such as metadata coverage, data quality scores, records disposition metrics, and search success rates to demonstrate impact and continuous improvement.
  • Collaborate with legal, privacy, security, and compliance teams to ensure information practices meet regulatory obligations and industry best practices.
  • Facilitate change management for information-related process changes: stakeholder communications, readiness assessments, and support materials that minimize disruption and accelerate adoption.
  • Perform information audits and inventories to catalogue content and data holdings, identify duplication, sensitivity, and retention liabilities, and propose rationalization strategies.
  • Support advanced analytics and BI initiatives by ensuring semantic layer alignment, consistent master data, and accessible lineage so analysts can trust and reuse information assets.
  • Provide consultancy-style advisory services to senior leadership: synthesizing findings, recommending strategic roadmaps, and advising on governance operating models and resource plans.
  • Coordinate with vendors and third-party consultants: manage RFPs, evaluate solutions against functional and non-functional requirements, and oversee vendor-delivery performance to ensure successful implementations.
  • Implement tagging strategies and automated metadata capture techniques (ingest pipelines, smart tagging, NLP) to increase coverage and reduce manual effort.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Information governance frameworks and policy development experience (designing standards for metadata, retention, classification).
  • Metadata modeling and taxonomy design (enterprise taxonomies, taxonomic hierarchies, controlled vocabularies).
  • Data quality management and profiling tools; ability to define and operationalize data quality rules and remediation processes.
  • Experience with data catalog and metadata management platforms (e.g., Collibra, Alation, Data Catalog, Informatica EDC).
  • Master Data Management (MDM) concepts and practical implementation experience (match/merge rules, golden record strategy).
  • Records management and retention policy implementation; familiarity with regulatory frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, SOX.
  • Strong SQL skills for data profiling and ad-hoc analysis; familiarity with relational databases, data warehouses and cloud data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift).
  • Knowledge of ETL/ELT processes and tools (Informatica, Talend, Azure Data Factory, AWS Glue) and data integration patterns.
  • Hands-on experience with enterprise content management systems and search platforms (SharePoint, Alfresco, ElasticSearch, Coveo).
  • Familiarity with data lineage, data mapping, and documentation tools; ability to produce lineage diagrams and technical specs.
  • API and integration knowledge to support data sharing and system interoperability.
  • Experience with analytics and BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) to align semantic layers and improve report trustworthiness.
  • Basic scripting or data manipulation skills (Python, R, or PowerShell) for automation and analysis.
  • Knowledge of privacy and security controls for data handling, classification, masking, and anonymization tools.
  • Project management and Agile delivery experience; ability to scope initiatives, manage timelines, and coordinate cross-functional teams.
  • Experience with enterprise search relevancy tuning, indexing strategies, and search UX improvements.

Soft Skills

  • Strong stakeholder management and facilitation skills; able to lead workshops and build consensus among technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication; able to create clear governance documentation, training materials, and executive summaries.
  • Analytical and problem-solving mindset; able to synthesize complex information and recommend pragmatic solutions.
  • Change management and adoption expertise; comfortable driving behavior change and training for large user populations.
  • Strategic thinking with a customer-centric mindset; focus on business outcomes, ROI, and measurable impact.
  • Attention to detail and quality orientation—ensuring governance artifacts and implementations are precise and reproducible.
  • Prioritization and time management across concurrent projects and deliverables.
  • Collaboration and team leadership; experience mentoring junior consultants or data stewards.
  • Negotiation and influence skills to secure resources and align competing priorities.
  • Adaptability in fast-changing environments; ability to work with legacy systems and modern cloud platforms.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Information Science, Library Science, Computer Science, Data Science, Business Administration, Records Management, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Information Management, Library & Information Science (MLIS), Data Science, Information Systems, or MBA with a focus on information strategy.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Information Science / Library & Information Science
  • Data Science / Computer Science
  • Business Administration / Management Information Systems
  • Records Management / Archival Studies
  • Information Systems / Knowledge Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–8 years of progressive experience in information management, data governance, knowledge management, or related consulting roles.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years delivering information governance programs, taxonomy and metadata design, MDM or records management projects, with demonstrable outcomes in improved data quality, compliance, or search/findability.
  • Experience working in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, government) and familiarity with compliance frameworks and privacy regulations.

Preferred Certifications (desirable but not required): CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional), CBIP, CIPP/E (Privacy), ITIL Foundation, PRINCE2 or PMP, and vendor certifications (Collibra, Alation, etc.).

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