Transportation Business Group Data Steward

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This is an in-office position that can be based in any established HDR office in the United States

This role shapes how our data is defined, used, and reused across our Transportation Business Group and HDR.
We’re looking for Transportation (BG) Data Stewards to help bring clarity and consistency to how data is defined, shared, and used across all Transportation disciplines and their embodied service lines within Transportation for HDR. This is a leadership role, not an IT or compliance position, and it plays a key part in enabling better business decisions, data reuse, and project delivery excellence.
This role is not expected to be the subject matter expert across all Transportation disciplines. Instead, the Transportation Data Steward defines how data practices are established, aligned, and sustained across the Transportation Business Group by coordinating and enabling subject matter experts and technical authorities within each domain. This role is ideal for technical leaders who are able to shape “how work gets done” and extend that influence on how data supports our business. This role exists to empower our teams to define data once, understand it the same way, and reuse it confidently across projects, teams, and time.

Why This Role Matters
Across the company, we all rely on data to plan work, deliver projects, answer questions, and make decisions. But when data is defined differently from team to team, project to project, or region to region, it becomes harder to trust, harder to reuse, and harder to scale. People spend time reconciling definitions, rebuilding datasets, or explaining what something really means instead of using the data to drive decisions that move work forward.
Transportation Data Stewardship helps fix this at the source.
By clearly defining how our data aligns to proper business terminology, and by creating shared understanding of data for our delivery teams, this role will support turning our data into solutions that our Transportation BG and employees can confidently use, reuse, and build upon. It reduces confusion, prevents rework, and makes it easier for teams to answer questions to deliver their work without needing to start from scratch every time.
For project teams, this will result in less time cleaning up data and more time delivering. For technical staff, it means clearer expectations and fewer one off requests. For leaders, it means faster, more consistent answers and greater confidence in the insights they rely on. For HDR, it means enterprise & project data that is ready to support analytics, automation, and AI in a way that reflects how we work.
This role is about making data simpler, more useful, and more connected to the way we do business, today and in the future.

What You’ll Do
• Establish and coordinate a network of SME expertise across the Transportation Business Group to define technical standards, while ensuring alignment to Transportation data practices and enterprise expectations
• Develop and maintain business-aligned data definitions for key engineering and technical terms that support structured data models, reporting, automation, and AI use cases.
• Use your technical network to build alignment and consensus around data processes, priority, and expected use.
• Promote consistent, responsible use of technical data, including access, data quality, best practice for format, and reuse.
• Support governance of externally sourced datasets (access, approvals, inventory awareness, storage, and lifecycle considerations)
• Promote data fluency across the Transportation Business Group
• Coordinate with the Technology Director to align data workflows and initiatives to Transportation BG Strategy
• Lead change management efforts to drive adoption of data standards, practices, and tools across the Transportation BG
• Regularly communicate and collaborate with other Data Stewards, Enterprise Data Science Teams, and Enterprise Data Operations staff.
• Ensure new tools identified for implementation within the Transportation BG are aligned to data strategy.

What This Role Is
• Embedded in the Transportation Business Group (not an IT role)
• Enablement-focused and collaborative
• Part of technology leadership, focused on supporting effective project delivery.
• Connected to a broader Data Steward network
• Focused on defining and enabling use of Transportation and service line data.

People Who Would be a Great Fit
• Understand how data is delivered, defined and used in the Transportation industry and on projects.
• Trusted by peers and leaders.
• Can translate complex practices into clear, usable guidance.
• Are comfortable making decisions and driving consensus?
• Have strong data fluency (and curiosity to keep learning)
• Bring a solid technical network you can tap for feedback and alignment.
• Demonstrate credibility in data, technology, and delivery practices and can influence teams through clarity, consistency, and outcomes.
• Able to clearly communicate the importance of data integrity at all levels of the organization.
• This role is not intended for early-career staff or as a learning assignment, but for established leaders with influence and credibility.

What Success Looks Like
This role establishes repeatable data practices by defining how data is captured, structured, governed, and reused across systems, workflows, and delivery teams. Success depends on driving adoption and aligning people, process, and technology rather than owning technical definitions in isolation.

• Maintained Transportation service line data glossary that people use.
• BGs have a well-known, go-to steward who can train staff and answer data questions.
• Data definitions and classifications translate into data models and AI tools that are reliable and structured enough to answer the questions leaders and teams care about
• Teams have the tools available to them to effectively leverage data for their project delivery and pursuits.
• Teams proactively reference shared definitions instead of creating local terminology.

Reporting Structure
This role is reporting to Transportation Technology Director who act as the Transportation Data Owners.

Preferred Qualifications
• Ten years of strategic leadership experience focused on growing, developing and leading teams in change management and working with data.
• Fifteen years of overall experience providing diverse data centric solutions and services to an organization and the industry.