The Role
The Data Quality Specialist will play a hands-on role in ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of Fair Trade USA’s program and its data. This role is centered around working with large and different types of datasets - spotting anomalies, tracing them back to root causes, and collaborating with teams to correct issues at source. By doing so, this role will help close data quality and governance gaps and ensure that the organization can trust the information used for decision-making, reporting, and stakeholder communications.
Key Responsibilities
- Review and monitor data across key systems (program, certification, audits, impact reporting, CRM) for errors, gaps, and inconsistencies.
- Run validation checks (manual and automated) to identify anomalies and flag data quality issues early.
- Investigate root causes of recurring errors by working directly with data owners, cross-functional teams, and system owners.
- Partner with business and program staff to adjust or improve data entry processes to prevent errors.
- Track and report on key data quality indicators (e.g., % completeness, % corrected anomalies, timeliness).
- Maintain documentation of issues and corrective actions taken.
- Support the roll-out of data governance policies (e.g., ownership, access, retention, validation rules).
- Use ThoughtSpot, as well as Salesforce and Microsoft Excel to visualize anomalies and communicate findings.
- Collaborate with the Quality Systems Specialist and broader Quality Management function to ensure recurring data issues are translated into systemic process improvements and corrective actions.
Key Competencies
- Exceptional attention to detail and curiosity for identifying outliers and inconsistencies in datasets.
- Strong problem-solving skills to connect anomalies back to process or system gaps.
- High proficiency with Microsoft Excel and BI tools (preferably ThoughtSpot; others such as Tableau also welcome).
- Collaborative and approachable — able to work across departments to surface problems and help teams solve them.
- Clear communicator, able to translate data quality issues into practical, actionable steps for non-technical colleagues.
- Experience developing dashboards in ThoughtSpot or equivalent BI tools; working knowledge of SQL and data modeling preferred.
- Experience with Salesforce or other CRM preferred.
Key Qualifications / Experience
- 2–4 years of experience working directly with data quality in an operational setting (quality checks, audits, governance, or process monitoring).
- Bachelor’s degree in Data Management, Information Systems, Business Analytics, or related field preferred.
- Experience in international trade, supply chains or sustainability preferred.
