Senior Consultant – Data Strategy, Governance & DataOps

Senior Consultant – Data Strategy, Governance & Data Ops

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates | Posted on 11/27/2025

Cyber Gate Defense, an IHC company, is a leading force in cybersecurity innovation, dedicated to enhancing the digital resilience of organizations across the region. Established with the mission to fortify the region’s cybersecurity landscape, Cyber Gate harnesses extensive expertise to tackle complex information security and operational challenges.

Our commitment to driving progress is reflected in our broad range of cybersecurity services and solutions. By leveraging cutting-edge, disruptive technologies, we deliver transformative, human-centric security solutions that safeguard organizations and empower them to navigate a secure and dynamic digital future.

With a wealth of in-house knowledge, Cyber Gate Defense is well-equipped to address the most intricate cybersecurity issues. We strive to make digital transformation secure, accessible, and beneficial, ensuring that organizations throughout the region thrive in an increasingly interconnected digital world.

Job Title:
Senior Consultant – Data Strategy, Governance& Data Ops

Location:

Abu Dhabi / Dubai
Department:
Advisory Services

As a Senior Consultant in Data Strategy, Governance &Data Ops, you will lead client engagements that bridge data privacy, analytics,AI readiness, and operational data excellence. You’ll help organizations designand implement integrated data frameworks that satisfy global compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA, ISO/IEC 27701, UAE data laws) while enablingscalable, secure, and intelligent data capabilities—from analytics to AIdeployment.

You’ll work across legal, IT, data engineering, and business functions to ensure data is not only protected and compliant, but alsodiscoverable, trustworthy, and ready for innovation. This role is central toour 2026 strategic expansion into end-to-end data and AI consultancy, with aunique focus on privacy-aware Data Ops—a differentiator in today’s market.

• Conduct Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) and Data Protection Impact Assessments(DPIAs), embedding privacy-by-design into analytics and AI workflows.
• Designand implement enterprise-wide data classification, lineage, and mappingframeworks that serve both compliance and analytics use cases.
• Analyseend-to-end data flows across M365, Azure, SaaS, and on-prem systems,identifying risks and opportunities for optimization.
• Develop and maintain Records of Processing Activities (RoPA) aligned with regulatory and business needs.
• Adviseon secure data lifecycle management, including retention, archival,anonymization, and ethical data use.
• Collaborate with data engineering and analytics teams to align governance policieswith Data Ops practices such as data pipeline observability, CI/CD fordata, and metadata management.
• Support the design of cloud-based data architectures (e.g., Azure Synapse,Purview, Data Factory) that integrate access control, quality monitoring,and privacy controls.
• Facilitateclient workshops on data governance maturity, AI ethics, and Data Opsadoption.
• Translateregulatory requirements into actionable technical and operationaldeliverables from policy to pipeline.
• Assistin incident response, breach analysis, and regulatory reporting with deepdata context.
• Guide clients in building AI-ready data foundations where compliance enables notlimits innovation.

• Bachelor’sdegree in data science, Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Security, or a related field.
• 4–6years of experience in data privacy, data governance, data architecture,analytics, or Data Ops ideally in a consulting or regulated industry(financial services, healthcare, government, etc.).
• Demonstrated experience in data classification, lineage mapping, and cross-system dataflow analysis.
• Strong working knowledge of GDPR, CCPA, ISO/IEC 27001 & 27701, and familiarity with UAE data protection frameworks (e.g., ADHICS, DIFC DPLaw).
• Hands-onexposure to cloud data platforms (Microsoft Azure preferred), includingtools like Purview, Synapse, Power BI, or Azure Data Factory.
• Understanding of Data Ops principles: data…