Senior Director, Data Governance

Overview:

This is an enterprise governance leadership role focused on building the operating model, policies, standards, accountability, and cross-company collaboration needed to manage data as a shared business asset. You will lead the Data Governance Office, shape the agenda for the Data Governance Council, and coordinate data owners and stewards across business and technology functions. Your mandate is to create governance that enables execution, improves trust, and resolves cross-functional data issues without adding unnecessary friction. While this is not a hands-on engineering role, you must have sufficient technical depth to evaluate data architectures, challenge implementation decisions, review data-quality controls, and partner credibly with Data Engineering, Enterprise Applications, Analytics, and Governance teams.  This role is enterprise-facing and operating-model led, with enough technical depth to ensure governance is implemented rather than merely documented. The ideal candidate is a strategic operator who can create alignment across functions, challenge solution designs constructively, and turn governance forums into a reliable mechanism for execution.  

What you will do:

• Own the enterprise data governance strategy, charter, policy framework, standards library, decision rights, and multi-year roadmap. 
• Lead the Data Governance Office as the operational center for cross-domain planning, issue triage, policy implementation, KPI monitoring, and escalation. 
• Shape agendas and decision materials for the Data Governance Council, bringing forward cross-company priorities, policy approvals, exceptions, risks, and investment decisions. 
• Build and sustain the network of executive data owners, business data stewards, operational data stewards, and technical data stewards across the organization. 
• Define stewardship roles, RACI models, meeting cadences, escalation paths, service expectations, and evidence requirements that make accountability visible and durable. 
• Create enterprise standards for data quality, metadata, business definitions, classification, access, retention, lifecycle management, privacy, and appropriate use. 
• Partner with technical teams to translate policies and standards into scalable controls, automated workflows, monitoring, and operational processes. 
• Participate in architecture and design reviews to ensure governance requirements are measurable, technically feasible, and incorporated into solution designs. 
• Facilitate resolution of cross-domain issues where ownership, definitions, process, system behavior, or risk requirements conflict. 
• Partner with Sales, Revenue Operations, Product, Finance, Legal, Privacy, Security, Enterprise Applications, Data Engineering, and the Enterprise PMO to align governance with business priorities. 

What we are looking for:

Required:

• Educational requirements: (Equivalent work experience will be accepted in place of the education requirement) Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Data Management, Business, Engineering, or a related discipline required. Advanced degree and/or professional certifications (DAMA-CDMP, DCAM, EDM Council, Salesforce, Snowflake, or related credentials) preferred.
• Years of experience: 12+
• Years of experience needed with specific skills: 12+ years in data management, enterprise governance, risk, data strategy, or adjacent disciplines, including senior leadership in a complex, matrixed organization. 
• Specific technical or software skills required: Working knowledge of Salesforce data models, objects, workflows, governance controls, security concepts, and enterprise data-management practices. Ability to understand, review, and challenge profiling, reconciliation, exception analysis, and data-quality reporting. Understanding of Snowflake, enterprise data warehouses, APIs, integration patterns, data pipelines, and modern data architectures. 
• Travel is required: Minimal – Approximately 5%
• Demonstrated success designing and operating enterprise data governance programs, including governance councils, a Data Governance Office, stewardship networks, and federated accountability. 
• Expertise in policy and standards development, data ownership, stewardship, MDM, metadata, data quality, issue management, classification, privacy, and lifecycle governance. 
• Ability to connect governance priorities to business processes and outcomes in commercial domains such as accounts, products, contracts, leads, sales, and quote-to-cash. 

AI Skills/Knowledge: 

• Provide data-governance leadership to responsible AI and analytics governance, ensuring trusted inputs, documented accountability, and appropriate controls. 
• Experience aligning data governance, responsible AI, privacy, security, records, legal, and compliance stakeholders. 

Preferred Skills (a plus but not required):

• Familiarity with MDM, entity resolution, hierarchy management, metadata, lineage, data catalogs, observability, and data-quality technologies. 
• Ability to translate governance objectives into critical data elements, measurable rules, control evidence, automated workflows, and technology-enabled enforcement. 
• Experience partnering with architecture, engineering, analytics, Enterprise Applications, and data operations teams to operationalize governance requirements. 
• Experience in a global software, technology, SaaS, recurring-revenue, or data-centric business. 

This position is 100% remote anywhere in the US

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