Senior Manager, Data Governance
Lead and grow a Data Governance team while owning foundational buildout, ongoing programs, the Atlan data catalog, certification standards, and AI-driven governance initiatives. Requires 8+ years data experience (including ownership of governance programs), 3+ years people management, SQL/dbt fluency, and strong stakeholder influence skills.
About the job
What You Will Work On
- Lead and develop the Data Governance team (currently two ICs: Senior Analytics Engineer and Data Governance Analyst), with anticipated growth.
- Own foundational governance buildout: metadata standards and taxonomy, business domain framework, glossary migration and enrichment, data profiling governance, and model conformance for silver- and gold-layer assets.
- Run ongoing governance programs: asset certification and re-certification, data quality observability, glossary and metrics-catalog freshness, standards enforcement and audit, new asset intake and review, and stakeholder education and adoption.
- Own the data catalog (Atlan), ensuring accuracy, completeness, and hygiene of asset metadata, glossary terms, and data products; drive adoption of Atlan as the primary engagement tool for certified data.
- Set and enforce certification standards, with authority to withhold or revoke certification on non-compliant assets, exercised credibly and collaboratively.
- Serve as key subject matter expert for Data & Analytics and cross-functional stakeholders: arbitrate metric and definition differences, drive company-wide adoption of best practices.
- Drive an AI-native approach to data governance: leverage AI for unifying information, enriching metadata, automating governance work.
- Contribute to data governance strategy and roadmap in partnership with Data & Analytics leadership.
How You Will Do Your Work
Success requires the following competencies:
- Plans & Aligns: Translate governance strategy into prioritized roadmap; communicate progress, tradeoffs, urgency; connect work to measurable business outcomes.
- Balances Stakeholders: Earn trust through partnership rather than mandates; develop standards collaboratively; maintain relationships amid conflicting demands.
- Influence and Leadership: Build credibility with engineers, analysts, and business stakeholders; foster knowledge-sharing, continuous improvement, and data trust culture.
- Manages Complexity: Navigate technical depth, program ownership, and cross-functional coordination; turn ambiguous mandates into actionable programs.
- Displays Good Judgment: Know when to enforce standards vs. build consensus; ask questions, apply critical thinking, own outcomes.
- Teamwork & Communication: Bridge technical and non-technical audiences; translate governance concepts to business value and business requirements to engineering standards.
- Skills and Knowledge: Maintain hands-on fluency in SQL, dbt, dimensional modeling; develop expertise in AI tooling, data observability, and governance tooling.
Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in a data role (analytics engineering, data engineering, or data governance), with hands-on SQL and dbt.
- 3+ years in people management, with track record of developing ICs and managing team delivery.
- Experience owning data governance, data quality, or data standards programs.
- Strong proficiency in SQL; working experience with dbt and dimensional modeling to define standards and review model conformance.
- Demonstrated experience managing data catalogs or governance tooling (Atlan, Alation, Collibra, or similar).
- Hands-on fluency with AI tooling for productivity, automation, metadata management, documentation, and governance workflows.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to drive alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong program ownership mindset: proactive prioritization, operating without defined ticket queue, driving cross-team initiatives.
- Experience in startup or high-growth environment building programs from scratch (preferred).
Skills
SQL, dbt, Dimensional Modeling, Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata Management, Data Catalog, Atlan, AI Tools, Data Observability, Analytics Engineering, Data Engineering
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