Principal Consultant – Data Lead

🏢 Attain Partners · all 8 jobs

📍 United States

💰 USD 160,000 / annual

📅 Posted Aug 30, 2026 · via Himalayas

🏷 Principal Consultant, Data Consulting, Education Data, Data Strategy, Data Governance, Principal Data Consultant +7 more

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Attain Partners is a management and technology consulting firm delivering services and solutions to advance client missions across the education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government landscapes. Launched in 2021, the firm evolved from Attain, LLC, focusing on providing strategic guidance and technology-driven transformations.
Attain Partners
Employee count: 501-1000

Salary: $160K – $160K per year
United States only

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Attain Partners is an innovative consulting firm dedicated to disrupting the status quo to change the world and improve the lives of those we touch. From strategy to technology and everywhere in between, our experts use their unique skills to advance the important missions of education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government clients.

People are at the center of all we do, and that’s why we empower career growth, provide industry-leading benefits packages, encourage a flexible work environment, and foster a culture of inclusion to support the needs of our team. We share a collective passion for our mission and our people. Guided by our seven core values, The Attain Way, our vision is the foundation of our culture—to be and attain the best.

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
- Establish and advise on enterprise data governance frameworks.

- Define data ownership, stewardship, accountability, and decision-making structures.

- Develop data standards, business definitions, and data quality controls.

- Establish processes for:

- Data quality monitoring

- Data remediation

- Data ownership

- Metadata and definitions

- Data lifecycle management

- Governance escalation and decision making

- Partner with business and technical stakeholders to embed governance into operational processes rather than treating governance as a standalone initiative.

Integration Advisory
- Strategy & Planning: Design integration architectures and blueprints, map end-to-end data flows, define integration patterns, and establish technical requirements across cloud and on-premise environments.

- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with business stakeholders, IT teams, application owners, architects, and external vendors to align integration requirements, priorities, dependencies, and business outcomes.

- Execution & Delivery Oversight: Provide technical leadership across design, development, testing, deployment, and stabilization while managing risks, dependencies, timelines, and overall solution quality.

- Support & Troubleshooting: Analyze integration failures, logs, data issues, and system errors; coordinate root-cause analysis and resolution of production incidents and interface issues.

- Integration Advisory: Serve as a subject matter expert on integration architecture, patterns, platforms, and best practices, recommending improvements that increase scalability, reliability, maintainability, and operational efficiency.

- Standards & Governance: Establish reusable integration standards, naming conventions, error-handling approaches, monitoring practices, security requirements, and documentation expectations.

- Platform Guidance: Advise on the appropriate use of APIs, batch/file processing, ETL/ELT, event-driven architecture, real-time and near-real-time integrations, and middleware/iPaaS platforms.

- Provide advisory guidance across platforms such as MuleSoft, Boomi, Informatica, Workato, Azure, AWS, and similar enterprise integration technologies .

Required Qualifications
- Significant consulting experience leading complex enterprise data initiatives.

- Experience within Higher Education , preferably Advancement, fundraising, alumni relations, or constituent data.

- Experience with Ascend CRM strongly preferred .

- Strong hands-on SQL development capabilities.

- Experience with data migration, source-to-target mapping, transformation, data quality, integration, and reconciliation.

- Demonstrated ability to lead client engagements and communicate effectively with executive stakeholders.

- Experience leading cross-functional technical and functional teams.

- Strong understanding of enterprise data architecture, data governance, integration architecture, and data management principles.

- Experience designing or advising on APIs, ETL/ELT, batch, real-time, and event-driven integration patterns.

- Ability to move between executive strategy discussions and detailed technical problem solving .

- Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and facilitation skills.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is not purely a project manager, architect, or developer. This person can operate across all three levels:

Executive: Build trust, communicate strategy, manage risk, and advise leadership.

Delivery: Own outcomes, coordinate teams, manage scope and priorities, and drive decisions.

Technical: Get into the data, write SQL, review mappings, design integration approaches, troubleshoot interfaces, and help solve difficult migration and data-quality problems.

The successful candidate should be viewed by the client as the overall Data Lead and trusted advisor for the engagement , while remaining technical enough to work directly alongside developers, architects, analysts, integration teams, and client data teams.
Additional Requirements:
- Demonstrated ability to build trusted advisor relationships with clients
- Experience supporting sales and business development
- Position requires flexibility to travel periodically based on business and client needs

Additional Information

Attain Partners values your mental, emotional, and physical health and wellbeing. Our comprehensive benefits package starts on your first day of employment and includes benefits such as:
- Competitive health, dental, and vision coverage, HSA and FSA accounts, life and disability insurance, fertility and family planning benefits, and employee assistance and discount programs
- 11 paid federal holidays and flexible unlimited time off (UTO)
- Generous 401(k) matching with immediate vesting
- Flexible career paths – our career tracks provide advancement, mobility, and flexibility as you continue to grow with us
- A healthy environment where we value unique experiences, and care about everything that makes you, you.

Attain Partners is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. Individual compensation will be commensurate with experience, education, and skills.

Attain Partners is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The individual base salary for this position is unique to each candidate and will be commensurate with experience, education, and skills. In addition to base salary, this role is eligible for an annual discretionary bonus.

Interested in this position but the compensation isn’t quite right? Let us know your expectations, and we’ll see if we can make it happen based on your qualifications.

Salary Range
$160,000—$160,000 USD

Attain Partners is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws. For more Information visit  EEO ,  EEO Poster Supplement ,  Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) , and  Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) .

If you are unable to complete this application due to a disability, contact this employer to ask for an accommodation or an alternative application process.

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About the job
Apply before
Oct 29, 2026
Posted on
Aug 30, 2026
Job type
Full Time
Experience level
Senior

Salary

Salary: $160K – $160K per year

Location requirements
Suggest an edit

United States

Hiring timezones
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United States +/- 0 hours

Job categories
Principal Consultant Data Consulting Education Data Data Strategy Data Governance Principal Data Consultant Senior Data Consultant Lead Analytics Consultant AI Data Lead Consultant Data Architect Senior Consultant Data and AI Senior Consultant Senior Data and Analytics Consultant Senior Data And AI Consultant

Skills
SQL Data Migration Data Governance Data Strategy Data Quality Data Architecture Integration Architecture ETL ELT API Design MuleSoft Boomi Informatica Workato Azure AWS Data Integration APIs Event Driven Architecture Missions Bridges Middleware

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About Attain Partners

Learn more about Attain Partners and their company culture.

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Attain Partners is a leading management consulting firm dedicated to providing strategic guidance and innovative solutions to organizations in the public and private sectors. With a commitment to excellence, we focus on helping our clients achieve their goals through tailored strategies and expert insights.

Our team of experienced professionals leverages deep industry knowledge and a collaborative approach to deliver impactful results. Whether it's enhancing operational efficiency, improving financial performance, or navigating complex challenges, Attain Partners is here to empower your organization to succeed in a rapidly changing environment.

Tech stack

Learn about the tools and technologies that Attain Partners uses to build, market, and sell its products.

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Animate.css

Java

PHP

MuleSoft

Cloudflare

Salesforce

Workday

Font Awesome

Azure DevOps

Jira

Lodash
2 more

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Employee benefits

Learn about the employee benefits and perks provided at Attain Partners.

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Dental coverage

Offers dental insurance plans.

Vision coverage

Offers vision insurance plans.

Life insurance

Offers life insurance coverage.

11 paid federal holidays

Provides 11 paid federal holidays.

View Attain Partners 's employee benefits

Apply now
Job expired?

Please let Attain Partners know you found this job on Himalayas. This helps us grow!
Apply now

About the job
Apply before
Oct 29, 2026
Posted on
Aug 30, 2026
Job type
Full Time
Experience level
Senior

Salary

Salary: $160K – $160K per year

Location requirements
Suggest an edit

United States

Hiring timezones
Show UTC offsets

United States +/- 0 hours

Claim this profile AP Attain Partners

Company size

501-1000 employees

Founded in

2021

Chief executive officer

Greg Baroni

Markets
Management Consulting Public Sector Consulting Private Sector Consulting Operational Efficiency Financial Performance Consulting Organizational Development Business Strategy Change Management Professional Services Strategy Consulting

Employees live in
United States

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