Data Governance Associate Director

Job Description General

Summary:

The Associate Director, Commercial Data Governance will lead the management and continuous improvement of data governance capabilities across Vertex’s commercial organization. This role will establish standards, policies, processes, and accountability frameworks that improve quality, consistency, accessibility, security, and responsible use of commercial data.

Key Responsibilities:

Lead the commercial data governance strategy, roadmap, and operating model in alignment with enterprise data governance priorities and commercial business objectives.

Define and maintain data governance policies, standards, procedures, and controls for commercial data domains.

Establish clear data ownership, stewardship, and accountability across commercial data assets.

Partner with data owners and business stakeholders to define critical data elements, business definitions, metadata, data lineage, and data-quality expectations.

Develop and monitor data quality rules, scorecards, issue-management processes, and remediation plans for priority commercial data.

Facilitate governance forums, including data governance councils and working groups, to drive alignment, decision-making, and issue resolution.

Collaborate with Commercial Operations, DTE, Insights & Analytics, Legal, and Compliance teams to ensure governed data supports business needs while meeting regulatory and company requirements.

Oversee the documentation and maintenance of commercial data catalogs, glossaries, data standards, and governance artifacts.

Identify data risks, gaps, and opportunities for process improvement; recommend practical solutions to strengthen data integrity and usability.

Support the adoption of data governance tools, processes, and training programs across the commercial organization.

Define and track key performance indicators for data quality, governance maturity, policy adherence, and stakeholder adoption.

Guide change-management activities that promote a culture of data accountability and informed, responsible data use.

Stay current on evolving data governance practices, life sciences commercial-data trends, privacy requirements, and relevant technology capabilities.

Knowledge and

Skills:

Data governance frameworks and operating models

Data quality management, profiling, validation, monitoring, and remediation

Data catalog, business glossary, metadata, and data-lineage practices

Master data management and reference-data concepts

Commercial data domains, including customer, healthcare provider, account, product, sales, market access, and digital engagement data

Data governance and catalog platforms, such as Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Microsoft Purview, or similar tools

Data analysis and reporting tools, such as SQL, Microsoft Excel, Tableau, Power BI, or similar platforms

Customer relationship management and commercial-data platforms, such as Veeva CRM, Salesforce, IQVIA, or comparable systems

Data privacy, access controls, information security, and compliance principles

Agile, project management, and process-improvement methodologies

Education and Experience:

Bachelor’s degree in business, information systems, data management, computer science, life sciences, or a related field.

Typically 8+ years of relevant experience in data governance, data management, commercial operations, analytics, information management, or related discipline.

Demonstrated experience building, implementing, or enhancing data governance frameworks, standards, and operating models.

Experience supporting commercial data within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, or similarly regulated industry.

Strong understanding of data quality management, metadata management, master data management, data lineage, and data stewardship…