Director, Data Governance

What You'll Do Director, Data Governance

Reports to
:
Senior Director, Data & Analytics Engineering

The Director, Data Governance, in the Global Analytics & Insights (GAI) organization, owns the governance function for Avalara’s enterprise data, metrics, and platforms - establishing the policies, controls, and practices that make GAI’s data trusted, secure, and fully compliant. This is a founding role for this function: you'll take over the current processes, identify areas for improvement, gaps, and other opportunities, define a roadmap and scale into a full practice as the function matures.

You’ll sit inside the GAI Data & Analytics Engineering organization and operate as a player-coach in the near term. You’ll be hands on with real governance work, tooling, and institutional muscle, partnering with Internal Audit and Information Technology to ensure the systems are complete and accurate. The first year mandate: get access controls right, ensure data classification and processes are aligned to Avalara’s enterprise standards, and establish the compliance posture that Avalara’s enterprise data requires.

#LI-remote

Function Leadership

• Assess the current state of data governance processes, tooling, and practices within GAI — identify gaps, risks, and opportunities, and develop a prioritized roadmap to address them

• Own and evolve the Data Governance function within GAI — setting the operating model, quality bar, and strategic direction for how GAI's data assets are classified, accessed, and stewarded

• Review all processes, systems, and protocol for work related to critical data, partnering with engineering to ensure processes evolve to meet the highest standards

• Establish clear data ownership and stewardship assignments across GAI's key domains; define who is accountable and who is responsible for each data asset

• Operate as a player-coach in the near term — executing hands-on governance work while laying the foundation for a scaled team; recruit and develop governance talent as headcount grows

Data Access Governance & Classification

• Maintain and mature the existing role-based access governance model for GAI — including access controls, request/review processes, periodic access reviews, and data sensitivity audits across Snowflake and GAI's data platforms

• Lead the classification of GAI's data assets against Avalara's enterprise taxonomy (Public, Internal Use, Sensitive, Restricted); drive remediation of unclassified or misclassified data

• Partner with Legal, IT, and Privacy to ensure GAI's data handling practices comply with applicable regulatory and contractual requirements, including SOC 2

• Ensure our enterprise data is prepared for AI use- with the right security, classification, intent, and protection

Data Quality & Metadata Management

• Build and maintain a data quality framework for GAI — quality dimensions, monitoring, alerting, and remediation processes; apply particular rigor to financial metrics and reporting data given their sensitivity and downstream impact

• Review SQL models and pipeline logic to verify that implementation aligns with documented business purpose — identifying definitional drift, undocumented transformations, or logic that has diverged from stated intent

• Champion development of a data catalog and metadata management capability within GAI; ensure pipelines, models, and data products are discoverable, documented, and trusted

• Establish data lineage practices that provide visibility into how data flows through GAI systems and where it is consumed downstream

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as GAI's primary liaison to Avalara's enterprise governance, security, privacy, and AI CoE teams — ensuring GAI practices align with company-wide frameworks

• Partner with Internal Audit and Information Technology on compliance reviews, control assessments, and system-level accuracy — ensuring GAI's data systems meet enterprise audit standards

• Engage executives and cross-functional leaders on data risk, compliance posture, and governance maturity; influence adoption without formal authority over partner functions

• Partner with Data Engineering…