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.

• 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.

• 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

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