Principal Consultant – Data Lead

Principal Consultant – Data Lead 

Role Overview 

The Principal Consultant – Data Lead serves as the senior data leader for Higher Education transformation engagements, with a strong requirement for experience with Ascend CRM and Advancement data. 

This role combines Engagement Leadership, hands-on SQL and data development, Data Strategy, Data Governance, and Integration Advisory. The individual must be comfortable leading executive and client conversations while also working directly with technical teams to analyze data, develop SQL, define integration patterns, and drive successful delivery. 

Key Responsibilities 

Engagement & Client Leadership 

• Serve as the primary data and technical point of contact for client leadership and key stakeholders. 

• Build trusted client relationships and ensure strong satisfaction, retention, and value realization. 

• Provide oversight across project scope, schedule, budget, risks, quality, and deliverables. 

• Lead and mentor consultants, business analysts, developers, and other project team members. 

• Facilitate executive and working-team discussions, resolve issues proactively, and align delivery with client objectives. 

• Identify risks, dependencies, and decisions requiring client or project leadership attention. 

• Translate technical delivery activities into clear business outcomes and executive-level communication. 

Higher Education / Ascend CRM Leadership 

• Bring strong knowledge of Higher Education Advancement data and CRM processes, preferably with direct Ascend CRM implementation or migration experience. 

• Understand constituent, household, organization, gift, campaign, fund/designation, prospect, portfolio, and engagement data. 

• Advise clients on data migration, conversion, reconciliation, integration, and data quality strategies associated with Ascend implementations. 

• Partner with functional Advancement teams to translate business requirements into data and technical solutions. 

• Understand the relationships between Advancement CRM, finance, identity, marketing, analytics, and other institutional systems. 

SQL Development & Data Engineering 

The Data Lead must remain technically hands-on and capable of directly supporting development when needed. 

• Write and troubleshoot complex SQL queries. 

• Analyze large datasets to identify data quality, transformation, mapping, and reconciliation issues. 

• Support source-to-target mapping and migration development. 

• Perform data profiling and assist with cleansing, normalization, deduplication, and transformation rules. 

• Support developers during complex migration and integration troubleshooting. 

Data Strategy 

• Serve as a bridge between executive leadership, business stakeholders, functional teams, and technical engineering/analytics teams. 

• Translate organizational goals and business requirements into actionable data strategies and technical requirements. 

• Develop current-state and future-state data architectures and roadmaps. 

• Advise clients on data platforms, integration patterns, analytics architecture, master data, and enterprise data management. 

• Help clients define how operational, CRM, financial, engagement, and analytical data should work together across the organization. 

Data Governance & Data Quality