Booking Holdings Romania is a Center of Excellence based in Bucharest, Romania and was created to support the increasing business demands of the Booking Holdings Brands. The Center of Excellence provides access to specialized and highly skilled talent, leading industry best practices, and collaboration opportunities across all of our Brands.
As part of our Booking Holdings Romania team, you will have the opportunity to be a part of the world’s leading provider of online travel, with a mission of making it easier for everyone to experience the world through five-primary consumer facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable.
Role description
Senior Data Governance Specialist will support the creation, implementation and advancement of data governance practices across the Booking Holdings brands.
You will work with the brand business and data teams, build trusted relationships, and mature data topics such as Policy and Standards, Master Data, Data Quality, Current and Target State Analysis, and Data Governance Tooling. You would be responsible for governance deliverables and enablement while influencing execution without line authority; ultimate accountability remains with domain and platform owners.
In this role you will complete complex assignments, applying principles and methodologies to find innovative solutions within an established data governance framework.
This role provides a hybrid way of working with an onsite presence of 2 days/week.
**Key Job Responsibilities and Duties **
- Influence policy and standards adoption. Shape and maintain the enterprise Data & AI Policy and standards; socialize changes, facilitate decision forums, and guide implementation so domains can meet control expectations while retaining ownership and accountability locally.
- Provide domain expertise on data governance methodologies and best practices (using industry frameworks e.g. DAMA).
- Collaborate with business and technical stakeholders to define, set up and implement data governance capabilities (e.g. data ownership and stewardship, curate the business glossary and CDEs). Define and maintain master‑data–specific standards and conventions (e.g., Address, Bank, Tax) and ensure they are embedded at points of creation/update in operational systems and stewarded across the lifecycle of the relevant domains.
- Orchestrate cataloging, classification, and lineage. Configure workflows and conventions in the governance platform (e.g., asset registration, glossary curation, CDE identification, approvals/certifications), drive enablement and quality gates, and coordinate with domains for execution and evidence at source systems
- Map and document data flows from operational systems to downstream platforms, maintaining business and technical lineage for master data entities and related operational data to support control design, impact analysis, and auditability.
- Advise teams/stakeholders on data quality management, metadata management, master & ref data management and data lifecycle practices.
- Support data literacy initiatives and help embed a culture of data accountability across BKNG.
Role Qualifications and Requirements
Required:
- Bachelor’s Degree, preferably in Computer Science or other analytical areas.
- Advanced experience working in data governance, data cataloging/lineage or comparable data-oriented role is required. Greater than 5 years of relevant experience is required.
- Ability to communicate clearly and effectively with written and verbal English.
- Complex problem solving, decision making and critical thinking skills.
- Storytelling with data.
- Stakeholder management.
- Operate with self‑direction at team scope, collaborating across partner teams as needed; mentor and support colleagues in applying governance best practices.
Nice to have:
- Experience working with Product Managers and Software/Data Engineering Teams.
- Experience working in the Financial Services Industry and translating regulation into actionable controls.
- Experience with Collibra, JIRA, Gitlab, Snowflake, Python, Project Management Tools.
- Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP certification).
Benefits & Perks
- Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide
- Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
- Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
- Competitive compensation and benefits package
- Vast amounts of data to validate your ideas and the opportunity to experiment with real users
Booking Holdings is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.
Pre-Employment Screening
If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.