Program Manager; Data Governance Exp

Program Manager with Data Governance Exp.

Program Operations:

• Own the program plan: maintain the Jira project board, track milestones against the 24-month roadmap, flag risks and blockers to the DGO Lead weekly.
• Prepare the monthly Council scorecard pack: pull the KPI metrics, draft the narrative, identify escalations, and present the supporting slide — DGO Lead presents, DG Program Lead owns the content.
• Coordinate the monthly DG Council: agenda, pre-reads, domain escalations, policy review items, and action tracking.
• Own the program communications calendar: all-hands kickoff, domain workshop scheduling, steward onboarding, literacy curriculum assignment.

Domain Onboarding & Governance Activation:

• Lead the Data domain pilot end-to-end: Data Owner designation, Steward onboarding, Alation orientation, domain workshop delivery (co-facilitated with Literacy Academy), DQ dimension workshop with the DQ Engineer.
• Build the domain onboarding playbook from the pilot: the repeatable template used for all other remaining domains in Phases.
• Drive Data Owner designation across all data domains: coordinate with each domain product owner, manage the designation form process in Jira, track completion against the 30-day Council commitment
• Onboard Data Stewards to Alation: coordinate Alation Academy enrollment, run the Steward orientation session, track the 6-week curation ramp for each new Steward.
• Manage the data issue intake process: own the P1/P2/P3 Jira queue, ensure SLA adherence is tracked for program KPI, maintain and follow escalate process.

Policy & Standards:

• Draft all program domains data policies for DGO Lead review and Council approval — starting with the key foundational policies.
• Maintain the policy register: version control, review schedule, annual renewal coordination.
• Own the data classification policy: work with Info Sec to ensure Alation sensitivity tags align to the Unity Catalog RBAC tiers.
• Author the domain governance playbooks: per-domain documentation of Data Owner, Steward, DPO, DQ thresholds, glossary scope, and AI data governance checklist process.

Alation Governance Layer:

• Work with the Alation Catalog Engineer to configure the governance workflow in Alation: approval chains, steward assignment, policy publication, DQ Certificate issuance process.
• Own the business glossary governance: term proposal workflow, approval routing, publication standards.
• Monitor Alation catalog coverage monthly: track program KPI (catalog coverage %) across all domains, identify gaps, and assign remediation to the relevant Steward or DPO.
• Coordinate AI data governance in Alation: ensure model cards are registered, lineage is documented from source to model input, and the AI data governance checklist is completed for each active AI use case.

Qualifications:

Required:

• CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional) required at hire or firm commitment to certify within 12 months — DAMA DMBOK2 proficiency is the practitioner foundation for this role.
• 7+ years in data management, data governance, or enterprise program management.
• Hands-on experience with an enterprise data catalog (Alation strongly preferred; Collibra or Informatica Axon, Atlan acceptable).
• Demonstrated experience running a governance program across multiple business domains — not just one department.
• Strong written communication: able to write data policies, governance playbooks, and executive briefing materials that are clear, precise, and stakeholder-appropriate.
• Experience facilitating workshops with business and technical stakeholders — able to run a DQ dimension workshop with a domain VP and a team of engineers in the same room.

Preferred:

• Health plan or healthcare payor experience — HEDIS, Stars, Medicare Advantage, HIPAA.
• Experience with Jira for governance workflow management (not just engineering sprint tracking).
• Familiarity with Great Expectations or equivalent DQ framework.
• Experience with Databricks Unity Catalog or equivalent data access governance layer.
• CDMP Practitioner or Master level.

Key Competencies:

• Systematic thinker — able to see the full data domain program and still execute the day-to-day pilot detail simultaneously.
• Clear writer — governance only works if the policies and playbooks are understood; this person writes so non-data people get it.
• Follows through — the single biggest failure mode in governance programs is well-designed commitments that nobody tracks; this role exists to prevent that.
• Comfortable with ambiguity — this program is new; the DG Program Lead regularly encounters situations the playbook doesn't yet cover.