Collibra Senior Principal Engineer

About the Role

As a CBRE Collibra Sr Engineering Principal, you will be instrumental in scaling CBRE's enterprise data governance program. Collibra serves as the platform of record for Data Governance, Data Catalog, Technical Lineage, and the emerging Data Product Marketplace within the organization. This role seeks a Principal Collibra Engineer to operate at the intersection of platform engineering and governance delivery. You will own the technical build, configuration, and segment rollout of Collibra capabilities at an enterprise scale.

Reporting to the Collibra Product Lead, this is a critical hire aimed at accelerating the maturity and adoption of the governance platform across CBRE's global business segments.

This job is part of the Software Engineering job function. They are responsible for successfully executing and monitoring system improvements to increase efficiency.

• Own the technical design, configuration, and build of Collibra capabilities including Business Glossary, Data Catalog, Technical Lineage, and Data Product Marketplace.
• Partner with the Collibra Product Lead to translate the product roadmap into engineered, production‑ready features.
• Build and maintain integrations between Collibra and the CBRE data stack—primarily Snowflake—including automated lineage harvesting and metadata synchronization.
• Develop and manage Collibra workflows (Activiti‑based) for stewardship, issue triage, data access requests, and asset certification.
• Lead the technical delivery of Collibra rollouts to CBRE business segments, coordinating with segment data stewards and technology leads.
• Define and maintain environment standards (dev/test/prod) and migration processes for Collibra configuration.
• Build scalable onboarding patterns—templates, accelerators, and automation—to reduce time‑to‑value for each new segment.
• Champion and implement Collibra’s AI capabilities—including AI‑assisted metadata enrichment, automated term suggestions, smart lineage, and natural language search.
• Evaluate new Collibra AI features against CBRE's governance maturity and prioritize adoption in the product roadmap.
• Connect best‑of‑breed CBRE AI solutions to Collibra as options for expanding Collibra use and capabilities.
• Work with the broader data team to ensure AI‑generated metadata is validated against CBRE data standards before publication.
• Establish engineering best practices for Collibra: version control for configurations, CI/CD for workflow deployments, and automated testing of governance workflows.
• Monitor platform health, performance, and licensing utilization; proactively flag risks to the Product Lead.
• Maintain technical documentation for all Collibra configurations, integrations, and customizations.
• Lead by example and model behaviors that are consistent with CBRE RISE values. Navigate objections and disagreements. Set the tone for teams to reach an agreement and adopt a different point of view. Negotiate with senior and executive management, customers, regulators, or vendors to influence decisions of visionary and strategic importance.
• Apply ingenuity and creativity to problem analysis and resolution in complicated and/or novel situations.

To perform this job successfully, an individual will need to perform each crucial duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

• Bachelor's degree preferred, along with 5+ years in data governance, data platform, or enterprise software engineering roles. Requires 3+ years of hands‑on Collibra implementation experience, including at least two of the following:
  Business Glossary, Data Catalog, Lineage, or Workflow configuration. In lieu of a degree, a combination of experience and education will be considered.
• Demonstrated experience integrating Collibra with a cloud data platform (Snowflake strongly preferred).
• Proficiency in REST API development for Collibra integrations;
  Python or similar scripting for automation.
• Experience delivering platform rollouts in large, matrixed enterprise environments.
• Strong understanding of data governance concepts: metadata management, data lineage, stewardship models, data classification.
• Independent judgment skills to determine methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for measuring success.
• Ability to recognize and resolve situations of substantial significance in a field of expertise or knowledge.
• In‑depth knowledge of Microsoft Office products. Examples include Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.
• Must be meticulously organized and have a masterful inquisitive mindset.