Data Governance Lead

This role supports and advances the organization's enterprise data governance program, ensuring data is well‑managed, high‑quality, compliant, and trusted across the business. The Senior Data Governance Lead plays a key role in facilitating governance decision‑making, implementing governance frameworks, and partnering with business and technology teams to drive adoption.

This position is ideal for a data governance professional who has strong hands‑on experience and is looking to step into a broader leadership and influence role.

Key Responsibilities

Data Governance Enablement & Facilitation

Facilitate meetings of the Data Governance Council in partnership with senior data leadership

Prepare governance proposals, recommendations, and impact assessments for council review

Support prioritization of governance initiatives and help translate decisions into actionable policies

Drive governance adoption through collaboration, influence, and education

Governance Framework Implementation

Implement and evolve the enterprise data governance framework aligned to DAMA DMBOK principles

Develop data policies and standards related to data quality, access, retention, classification, and lineage

Define and support data ownership and stewardship models across priority data domains

Create practical governance playbooks, procedures, and training materials

Metadata, Lineage & Platform Alignment

Partner with data engineering and analytics teams to implement metadata management practices

Support documentation and visibility of data lineage across modern data platforms (Databricks, Kafka, cloud databases)

Collaborate on governance of streaming and event‑driven data pipelines

Compliance & Continuous Improvement

Partner with Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to align governance practices with regulatory requirements

Participate in governance maturity assessments and contribute to roadmap development

Identify process improvements and scaling opportunities as the governance program matures

Qualifications

Required

5-7 years of experience in data management, analytics, or data engineering, with meaningful exposure to data governance

Hands‑on experience contributing to data governance initiatives, councils, or stewardship programs

Familiarity with modern data platforms (Databricks, Kafka, cloud‑native databases)

Working knowledge of metadata management, data catalogs, and data lineage concepts

Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills

Bachelor's degree in a related field

Preferred

DAMA CDMP or similar certification

Experience in fintech, payments, or regulated industries

Exposure to Open Metadata or similar tools

Experience governing data in streaming or event‑driven architectures

Interest in career progression toward people or program leadership roles