Data Governance Lead

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and own the enterprise data governance framework, including policies, standards, metadata strategy, and data stewardship processes.
• Lead governance across cloud and analytics platforms with priority on Databricks and Unity Catalog, followed by AWS data services and Dataiku.
• Define catalog structure, classification models, tagging, and access rules across multiple business domains.
• Implement metadata management, lineage tracking, and data quality controls to improve trust and usability.
• Drive unification of data across fragmented systems by designing scalable models, harmonized definitions, and reusable governance patterns.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance (e.g., PII, GxP, HIPAA where applicable).
• Oversee data access controls, entitlements, and policy enforcement across analytic environments.
• Establish processes for issue management, remediation, and continuous improvement.
• Mentor data stewards and support adoption of governance standards across business teams.
• Support platform modernization and enable analytics, AI/ML, automation, and self-service use cases.

Required Skills & Experience

• 7+ years in data governance, data management, or enterprise data architecture.
• Hands-on expertise with Databricks and Unity Catalog (catalog design, access policies, lineage, classification/tagging) as the primary platform requirement.
• Experience with AWS data services (e.g., S3, Glue, Lake Formation, Redshift, IAM).
• Experience with data governance workflows, tooling, and model management.
• Strong understanding of MDM, metadata management, and data quality frameworks.
• Proven success governing data across fragmented systems, complex pipelines, and multi-cloud or hybrid environments.
• Familiarity with data privacy and compliance (PII, PHI, GxP, GDPR, etc.).
• Ability to work across business and technical teams, influence without authority, and build alignment.
• Excellent communication skills, with ability to translate governance concepts for non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in life sciences, healthcare, or regulated industries.
• Background with product-oriented data platforms or customer-facing data services.
• Knowledge of workflow tools (Jira, Confluence) and governance platforms (Collibra, Alation, data.world preferred but not required).
• Certifications in Databricks, AWS, or data governance frameworks