Data Quality & Protocols Officer

The Data Standards Protocol Officer helps people with sight loss to live the life they choose by ensuring that the organisation’s data assets are accurate, consistent, and fit for purpose. This involves implementing and maintaining data protocols, standards, and governance practices, as well as supporting data-informed decision-making across teams. This role serves as a bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders to embed a strong data quality culture, enforce protocols, and support compliance (e.g. GDPR) in alignment with the organisation’s mission.

Key Responsibilities

Data Quality Management & Oversight

· Define, implement, and maintain data quality rules, validations, and checks (e.g. completeness, consistency, accuracy, uniqueness, timeliness).

· Monitor data quality metrics / KPIs across key datasets/systems, generate regular dashboards/reports, and highlight issues or trends.

· Perform data cleansing, deduplication, validation, and correction routines.

· Investigate root causes of data quality problems and work with system owners and process owners to resolve underlying issues.

· Audit datasets periodically to ensure compliance with data standards and detect anomalies.

· Promote "data quality at source" practices by embedding validations at point-of-entry (e.g. forms, CRM, intake processes).

Data Protocols, Standards & Documentation

· Develop and document data protocols, standards, and policies (naming conventions, data definitions, metadata, data lifecycle, access rules).

· Maintain and govern the data dictionary, data glossaries, and metadata catalogues.

· Ensure consistent use and interpretation of field definitions, code lists, default values, and formats across systems.

· Update data retention and archival protocols, data versioning, and record deletion standards.

· Ensure that new data systems or changes to existing systems comply with established protocols.

Data Governance & Compliance

· Assist in embedding data governance practices, roles and accountability (e.g. data stewards, owners) within teams.

· Support compliance with data protection regulations (e.g. UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018), ensuring that protocols and data handling practices adhere to legal requirements.

· Support Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), privacy by design reviews, and risk assessments for data projects.

· Work with the legal, IT, security and compliance teams to ensure protocols align with information security, privacy and data sharing agreements.

· Support audits, both internal and external, around data/data processing/security.

Stakeholder Engagement, Training & Culture

· Act as a point of contact and advisor for staff on data quality and protocol issues, queries or escalations.

· Develop training, guidance materials, and documentation (e.g. user guides, standard operating procedures) to build data literacy among users and stakeholders.

· Facilitate workshops or sessions with teams to understand their data needs, ensure adherence to protocols, and gain input into evolving standards.

· Engage with cross-functional teams so that data requirements and constraints are understood upstream in projects or system changes.

Reporting, Insight & Support

· Extract, transform, and present data (via dashboards, reports, visualisations) for internal and external stakeholders, ensuring the underlying data meets quality standards.

· Collaborate with the Monitoring & Evaluation, Programmes, Fundraising, Finance, and other teams to support their reporting needs, ensuring consistency in metrics and definitions.

· Support funder or regulatory reporting by ensuring data submitted is accurate, documented, validated, and auditable.

· Provide ad-hoc analysis, data sampling, profiling and validation as requested.

System Improvements, Integration & Change Management

· Work with IT/data teams, developers, and vendors to ensure system changes, upgrades or integration projects preserve or enhance data quality and protocol compliance.

· Support data migrations, database merges, system decommissions, ensuring proper mapping, validation and reconciliation.

· Participate in user acceptance testing (UAT) phases of system development to validate compliance with protocols.

· Recommend enhancements, tools or automation (e.g. validation rules, quality engines, scripts) to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.

Risk Management & Escalation

· Identify data-related risks (e.g. data loss, inconsistent data, unauthorised access) and propose mitigation strategies.

· Maintain logs of data quality incidents, track corrective actions, and report on trends/progress to leadership.

· Escalate significant data issues to senior management or data governance committees where required.

This role follows a standard working pattern of Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, with a hybrid working model. You’ll be expected to work two days per week in the office, with the flexibility to choose your nearest Guide Dogs office as your base location.

About Us

How to apply 

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help. Call them on 0118 3540345 or drop an email to [email protected].

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions as part of this application process, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

If you want to know more about the teams who work at Guide Dogs, you can find it on our Careers Page

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Guide Dogs welcomes applications from all sections of the community and actively encourages diversity to maximise achievements, creativity and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment, regardless of age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or nationality. 

As a Disability Confident Employer, we are proud, whenever possible, to offer an interview to all candidates that meet our selection criteria, and who indicate they wish their application to be considered under our Disability Confident interview commitment. For more details, visit our careers site.

If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier; in addition, we cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

Safeguarding

Guide Dogs is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children, young people and adults at risk of harm with whom we work. We expect all our employees and volunteers to fully share this commitment.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually, taking into account the nature of the offense, its relevance to the role, and the time that has passed since the incident. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.