Direct Response Data Manager [SK-24840]

As a valued partner with Aquent, we are thrilled to support a leading agency that stands at the forefront of direct response fundraising. This organization is dedicated to crafting impactful campaigns that forge deep connections between vital causes and their supporters. Driven by a commitment to data-driven strategies, they consistently maximize philanthropic efforts and catalyze lasting change. Joining this team means becoming an integral part of a mission that truly makes a difference, empowering non-profits to achieve their goals and cultivate robust community relationships. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute your expertise and directly impact meaningful initiatives from October 26, 2026, to January 31, 2027.

Are you a meticulous data professional with a passion for precision and a unique ability to translate strategic vision into actionable data? We are seeking a pivotal individual to join a dynamic team as a critical link between strategic planning, creative execution, and technical data operations. In this impactful role, you will be instrumental in ensuring the integrity and accuracy of critical campaign data, directly shaping the success of fundraising initiatives, and enabling effective engagement with supporters. Your expertise will be vital in safeguarding campaign schedules, resolving complex data challenges, and upholding the highest standards of data governance, making a tangible difference in every project you touch.

What You’ll Do

• Review diverse client strategies to author, update, and validate comprehensive data instructions for strategists and the data engineering team, ensuring alignment with campaign goals.
• Maintain and manage the organization’s data guidebook and line-by-line data dictionary, proactively capturing new business rules, identifying missing or conflicting logic, and translating strategic briefs into precise, executable technical instructions.
• Support strategists during grid creation, donor select generation, and campaign brief handoffs, ensuring clean and accurate data inputs from the very beginning of each project.
• Perform rigorous quality control on data files returned from data processing and meticulously audit mail entry outputs to ensure strict campaign fidelity and accuracy.
• Serve as the primary escalation point for all data quality issues, ensuring technical questions are resolved collaboratively with client teams before data processor execution.
• Uphold the highest standards of data governance, security, and PII handling on every client engagement, protecting sensitive information and maintaining trust.
• Build and refine standardized data instruction templates and process documentation throughout the engagement, facilitating seamless knowledge transfer and operational efficiency for staff.
  
  

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in direct response data management, including expertise in donor segmentation, selects, suppressions, merge/purge rules, source coding, and writing error-free data instructions.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience with SQL and relational databases.
• Working knowledge of ETL builds, data warehousing, and data quality practices.
• Comfort learning proprietary data platforms combined with a service-oriented mindset and the discipline required for a role accountable for production-bound mail files.
• Immediate availability for start on October 26, 2026.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Background as a Technical Project Manager, Data Project Manager, or Business Analyst. (Data Engineers will be considered, but must possess strong client-facing communication skills — this is not a hands-on data engineering role).
• Experience with enterprise CRM platforms, with hands-on Salesforce experience strongly preferred. Comfort learning donor/constituent management systems quickly.
• Exposure to AWS data services, cloud data warehousing, or lakehouse tooling is a plus (role will not build ETL pipelines directly).