Data Governance Engineer Chime - San Francisco, CA, US

Data Governance Engineer

Chime was created with the mission to make financial peace of mind a reality for millions of everyday people. We're one of the fastest-growing financial technology companies in the U.S., offering banking services that are helpful, easy, and free—because we want to profit with our members, not from them. Our model doesn't rely on overdraft, monthly service, minimum balance, or other member fees—it just focuses on delivering member value.

The Data Governance function is pivotal in ensuring the integrity, trustworthiness, and effective management of Chime's data assets. Our mission is to establish and operationalize data governance frameworks that not only meet compliance requirements, but actively enable high-confidence decision making across the company. As a Data Governance Engineer, you will develop and implement policies and tools for data quality, developer enablement, certified datasets, and governance automation - with a sharp focus on building trust signals and scorecards that help data consumers quickly understand and act on the reliability of Chime's data.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will write production-quality code to build automation for governance and data quality processes using Terraform, Python (or similar languages), and contribute to internal libraries, frameworks, and orchestration workflows that enable scalable governance.

You will partner closely with data engineering, analytics, product engineering, and compliance teams to:

• Support Chime in data compliance and risk reduction initiatives
• Establish data quality as a product discipline
• Build trust signals and scorecards that make data reliability transparent and data context valuable for a variety of use cases
• Implement governance workflows upstream, where data are created
• Ensure data context and metadata are sufficient for downstream use cases, including AI applications

You will be involved in reviews of technical designs and implementation plans to provide guidance on appropriate development from a data governance and compliance perspective, acting as a trusted advisor to teams innovating at Chime. You will also be a strong advocate and leader for Artificial Intelligence tooling and adoption at Chime, bringing curiosity and a practical eye for where AI creates leverage in data governance workflows. This role is 40% strategic influence, 40% development and building, and 20% stakeholder management and support.

The base salary for this role and level of experience will begin at $160,000.00 and go up to $221,000.00. Full-time employees are also eligible for a bonus, competitive equity package, and benefits. The actual base salary offered may be higher, depending on your location, skills, qualifications, and experience.

In this role, you can expect to:

• Build Data Trust Infrastructure: Design and implement trust scorecards, trust signals, and quality indicators that give data consumers real-time visibility into data reliability - and partner with producers upstream to embed quality checks at the source before issues propagate downstream.
• Drive Data Quality Strategy: Own and evolve Chime's data quality strategy end-to-end. Design and partner with engineering teams to implement data quality frameworks and monitoring systems that proactively identify, surface, and resolve data issues at scale.
• Develop and Implement Data Governance Policies: Create and enforce policies for data classification, quality, and lifecycle management, ensuring data integrity and compliance with SOX and other applicable regulatory standards.
• Enable the Data Catalog: Collaborate on the development, adoption, and enrichment of Chime's data catalog - improving discoverability, context richness (lineage, ownership, definitions, usage guidance), and the overall experience of working with Chime's data.
• Automate Governance Processes: Develop and deploy automation solutions for data governance tasks, such as metadata management, data lineage tracking, access controls, and quality remediation workflows.
• Champion SOX Compliance: Play an active role in Chime's SOX compliance efforts, ensuring that data governance practices, controls, and audit trails meet regulatory requirements and are well-documented.
• Lead AI Adoption for Data Governance: Serve as a leader and advocate for AI tooling within the data governance space - identifying opportunities to apply AI to automate governance workflows, improve data context, enhance trust scoring, and accelerate adoption of governance best practices across engineering teams.
• Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with data engineers, analysts, and compliance officers to align data governance initiatives with business needs and regulatory requirements.

To thrive in this role, you have:

• Experience: 5+ years in data engineering, data governance, or a related field, with hands-on experience in data classification, cataloging, quality assurance, and trust frameworks. Engineering ability to design and implement data governance and quality processes is critical to success.
• Trust & Quality Expertise: Demonstrated experience building data trust signals, quality scorecards, or similar frameworks that make data reliability visible and actionable for both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Programming Experience: Proficiency in Python or a comparable programming language, and experience building scalable data tooling or automation pipelines.
• Curiosity and Relentlessness: You are genuinely curious about data, technology, and the problems that sit at the intersection of the two. You don't let ambiguity stop you - you dig in, ask the right questions, and keep pushing until you've found the right answer or built the right solution. You bring energy and persistence to hard problems and don't need external pressure to drive yourself forward.
• Composure in Complexity: Data governance at a fintech means navigating competing priorities, regulatory constraints, sprawling data ecosystems, and stakeholders with different mental models of "good." You thrive in this environment rather than shrinking from it - you can hold complexity without getting overwhelmed, break it into manageable pieces, and make steady progress without waiting for perfect conditions.
• Exceptional Communication: You are a terrific communicator in both verbal and written form. You can write a crisp one-pager that earns buy-in from a skeptical audience, run a meeting that ends with clarity instead of confusion, and translate deeply technical concepts into plain language that moves people to action. You treat communication as a core part of the job, not an afterthought.
• Product Management Mindset: You think like a product manager as much as an engineer. You ask "who is this for and what problem does it solve?" before writing a line of code. You prioritize ruthlessly, define success before you start building, and care about adoption and outcomes - not just delivery. You treat your internal stakeholders as customers and design solutions with their experience in mind.
• AI Curiosity and Advocacy: Genuine curiosity about AI and its applications in the data governance space, with an appetite for identifying and piloting new tools and workflows that improve the experience of working with Chime's data.
• Technical Proficiency: Strong knowledge of data governance tools and platforms, and experience with cloud data warehouses like Snowflake. Experience with data catalog platforms and driving adoption across engineering organizations is a strong plus.
• Bonus: Compliance Knowledge: Familiarity with SOX, CCPA, and other data privacy and financial regulations, and ability to apply technical skills to governance practices that meet audit and compliance requirements.

At Chime, we believe that everyone can achieve financial progress. We created Chime—a financial technology company, not a bank*—on the premise that core banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. Through our user-friendly tools and intuitive platforms, we empower our members to take control of their finances and work towards their goals. Whether it's starting a savings account, purchasing a first car or home, launching a business, or pursuing higher education, we're proud to have helped millions unlock their financial potential.

We're a team of problem solvers, dreamers, and builders with one shared obsession: our members. From day one, Chimers have worked tirelessly to out-hustle and out-execute competitors to bring our mission to life. Their grit and determination inspire us to work harder every day to deliver the very best experience possible. We each bring an owner's mindset to our work, refusing to be outdone and holding ourselves accountable to meet and exceed the highest bars for our teams, our company, and our members.

We believe in being bold, dreaming big, and taking risks, while also working together, embracing our diverse perspectives, and giving each other honest feedback. Our culture remains deeply entrepreneurial, encouraging every Chimer to see themselves as stewards of our mission to help everyday Americans unlock their financial progress.

We know that to achieve our mission, we must earn and keep people's trust—so we hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity in everything we do. These aren't just words on a wall—our values are embedded in every aspect of our business, serving as a north star that guides us as we work to help millions achieve their financial potential.

Because if we don't—who will?

*Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A., Members FDIC.

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