Technical Metadata Specialist

Aleknagik Technology, LLC is searching for a qualified candidate to fill the role of Technical Metadata Specialist. This position supports enterprise-level data governance initiatives for a federal health organization by ensuring metadata across authoritative and secondary-use data systems is accurate, complete, standardized, and usable.

The selected candidate must be within commuting distance of Falls Church, VA, as this role requires on-site and hybrid support in alignment with customer requirements.

Duties

The Technical Metadata Specialist is responsible for analyzing, validating, standardizing, and supporting stewardship of metadata captured and published through enterprise governance repositories and data catalogs. Duties include, but are not limited to:

• Analyze metadata collected during baseline inventory efforts for authoritative and secondary-use data systems.
• Review technical, business, operational, and security metadata for completeness, accuracy, and consistency.
• Identify metadata gaps, duplications, inconsistencies, and ambiguities across systems and domains.
• Collaborate with system owners, data stewards, and subject matter experts to resolve metadata issues.
• Normalize metadata values to align with approved standards, naming conventions, schemas, and taxonomies.
• Apply controlled vocabularies and reference data to ensure semantic consistency across domains.
• Align data element definitions with DoD, DHA, and NIST standards.
• Perform metadata quality checks, including validation of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and consistency.
• Document metadata quality issues and support corrective and remediation activities.
• Support development and maintenance of metadata quality metrics and dashboards.
• Develop, review, and maintain technical and business data dictionaries.
• Validate AI-generated metadata documentation for accuracy, clarity, and usability.
• Ensure alignment between documented metadata and system implementations.
• Support metadata lifecycle workflows including creation, review, approval, publication, versioning, and retirement.
• Assist data stewards with metadata stewardship responsibilities and approval tracking.
• Support audit readiness through traceable metadata changes and stewardship decisions.
• Validate metadata synchronization across the interim repository, DHA Enterprise Data Catalog (DHA-EDC), and federated platforms.
• Identify and report discrepancies in federated metadata exchanges and support remediation efforts.
• Support user acceptance testing (UAT) for metadata search, discovery, and usability features.
• Capture user feedback and recommend improvements to metadata presentation and organization.
• Support optional federated governance initiatives and metadata requirements for data products when exercised.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• 4–7 years of experience in:
  • Metadata analysis, management, and data modeling fundamentals
  • Development and maintenance of data dictionaries, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies
  • Metadata quality assessment and validation techniques
  • Enterprise data catalog platforms
  • DoD, DHA, or federal data standards and compliance frameworks
  • Technical documentation and stakeholder coordination

Required Education

• Bachelor's degree in a related field, such as:
  • Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Data Analytics
  • Mathematics
  • Physical or Life Sciences