Specialist, Access Stewardship - Data Product, Access, Privacy & Compliance

Job Description

The Opportunity

• Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130- year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare.
• Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.
• Drive innovation and execution excellence. Be a part of a team with passion for using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making, and which creates custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world's greatest health threats.

Our Technology Centers focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our companys’ IT operating model, Tech Centers are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy.

A focused group of leaders in each Tech Center helps to ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in growth, success, and well-being of our people, to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging to managing critical emergencies. And together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centers.

Role Overview

We are hiring an Access Steward to join our Enterprise Data Quality and Stewardship team. As an Access Steward, you will be the trusted custodian of how data access is requested, verified, approved, granted, monitored, and revoked across the enterprise. You will sit at the intersection of governance, compliance, operations, and technical documentation - ensuring that the right people get the right access to the right data, at the right time, for the right reasons, and always with a defensible audit trail.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives on structure, enjoys turning ambiguity into repeatable processes, and takes personal ownership of compliance outcomes. You will work closely with data owners, data operations engineers, information security, privacy, legal, and business stakeholders to keep our access ecosystem clean, compliant, and efficient

What will you do in this role

1. Access Request Intake, Verification & Approval Routing

• Serve as the first point of governance review for data access requests submitted through enterprise ticketing platforms such as ServiceNow or Jira Service Management.
• Validate business justification, use-case alignment, data classification, contractual and regulatory requirements, and completion of mandatory training or role-specific certifications.
• Coordinate approvals across data owners, privacy, compliance, and third-party reviewers; monitor service levels, manage escalations, and recommend workflow or automation improvements.

2. Governance, Compliance & Audit

• Maintain audit-ready evidence covering ownership validation, approvals, communications, exceptions, access changes, and revocations.
• Monitor training status, access compliance, and usage patterns; initiate reminders, reviews, or time-bound revocation for expired, dormant, anomalous, or over-privileged access.
• Support governance reviews, internal audits, and regulatory examinations by preparing evidence packages, process walkthroughs, and corrective-action tracking.

3. Ticket Lifecycle & Project Management

• Manage the end-to-end issue lifecycle, including intake, triage, prioritization, assignment, dependency management, service-level tracking, escalation, and closure.
• Maintain accurate boards, dashboards, and reports that provide visibility into request volumes, backlog, aging, turnaround time, risks, and service-level performance.
• Participate in planning and operational ceremonies, coordinate across teams and geographies, and improve forms, workflows, and request types to reduce delays and rework.

4. Documentation & Technical Writing

• Author, maintain documentation for access provisioning, revocation, training verification, exception handling, escalation, and audit processes.
• Maintain the team knowledge base, including process maps, decision trees, role and job catalogues, RACI charts, onboarding materials, and quick-reference guides.
• Translate governance requirements into clear documentation, audit reports, training content, and change communications for technical and non-technical audiences.

5. Data Platform

• Apply working knowledge of data lakes, cloud data warehouses, lakehouse platforms, and BI ecosystems to assess the sensitivity, purpose, and movement of enterprise data.
• Understand core identity and access management concepts, including SSO, MFA, directory services such as AD or Entra ID, RBAC, ABAC, and privileged access management.
• Partner with data engineering, platform, and security teams to support consistent access controls across storage, compute, catalog, and consumption layers.

6. Stakeholder Management & Communication

• Guide data owners, requestors, and business teams through access requirements, approval paths, and remediation actions without compromising governance standards.
• Communicate decisions, rejections, risks, and required actions clearly and professionally, balancing responsive service with rigorous control.
• Represent the Access Steward function in governance forums, audit reviews, and cross-functional working groups, ensuring issues and outcomes are documented and followed through.

7. Data Product / Immuta

• Gather the required information from business team to register the data product in discover.
• Ingest the data sources to Immuta through self service/ through TOPS team.
• Creation, approval and updating of user passport stamps.
• Registering and updating the data product in Discover.
• Creation, applying and updating the policies in Immuta.
• Provide Demo and train the business users and ensure the business teams are self-sufficient to register the data products. Guide/support the business teams for DP registration as and when required.
• Report any issues/challenges (Ex: missing of tags in immuta, sync issues between discover and Immuta etc.) encountered during the DP registration process to platform team.

What should you have

Primary Skills : Databricks, AWS, Data analytics, Data Platform , Commercial data ecosystems

• 5 years of experience in data governance, access management, identity and access management (IAM), IT operations, compliance, audit, or a related function.
• Hands-on experience with JIRA and enterprise ticketing platforms such as ServiceNow, including workflows, boards, dashboards, reporting, and service-level management.
• Strong project and task-management discipline, including sprint planning, backlog prioritization, dependency and escalation management, and participation in Scrum ceremonies within a high-volume delivery environment.
• Demonstrated technical-writing capability, including SOPs, process documentation, audit materials, onboarding guides, and stakeholder communications.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, attention to detail, and the ability to work effectively with requestors, data owners, engineering, security, privacy, legal, compliance, and audit stakeholders.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced and sometimes ambiguous environment, exercising sound judgment, maintaining clear documentation, and escalating or challenging decisions when necessary.
• Exposure to tools such as Collibra, Alation, Immuta, Okta, SailPoint, or Saviynt.

Preferred Qualifications

• Working knowledge of data lakes, cloud data platforms, enterprise access-control concepts, and relevant privacy, security, and compliance frameworks.
• Experience with governance or access controls in Databricks or comparable platforms.
• Experience with JIRA automation, Power Apps, Power Automate, or Power BI to improve workflows, reporting, compliance monitoring, or audit readiness.
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, or PowerShell for reporting or automation; relevant governance, privacy, audit, IT service management, or Agile certifications are advantageous.

Who we are

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

Required Skills:

Change Communications, Compliance Frameworks, Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Management, Data Modeling, Data Quality, IT Operation, Prioritization, Quality Management, Scrum Ceremonies, Sprint Planning, Stakeholder Communications, Stakeholder Management, Working Groups

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Secondary Language(s) Job Description:

#MSDHYDIT

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

Domestic

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

No Travel Required

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

09/14/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.