Data Governance Assurance & Stewardship Associate Director

Data Governance Assurance & Stewardship Associate Director

Location: Dallas Other locations: Anywhere in Region Salary: Competitive

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Position Summary

The Governance Monitoring, Assurance & Stewardship SME is an Associate Director role within the Global Data Stewardship Office, combining data governance and assurance expertise with practical technology delivery and business engagement. The role designs and operates governance monitoring, evidence and stewardship-effectiveness capabilities, providing objective second-line insight into whether governance accountabilities and controls are embedded and operating effectively.

Essential Functions of the Job

Establish continuous governance monitoring, evidence and assurance capability, connecting findings and stewardship insight to measurable improvement. Define and configure governance measures, indicators, thresholds, reporting rules and a risk-based monitoring plan; translate approved policy and control requirements into traceable, machine-readable monitoring rules and metadata, maintaining links to source requirements and control evidence. Assess whether accountabilities, decision rights, metadata, lineage, data-quality and lifecycle controls are embedded and operating. Translate approved control objectives into test procedures, sampling approaches, evidence standards, rating criteria and escalation thresholds, agreeing interpretations with designated control owners and recommending changes where gaps are identified. Validate self-assessments and attestations and analyse key risk, control and performance indicators. Identify systemic gaps, recurring themes and root causes; track findings, agree remediation actions with accountable owners, validate closure evidence and escalate overdue or material issues. Accountable owners remain responsible for implementing remediation and accepting residual risk. Define role profiles, competency expectations, guidance, learning pathways and communities of practice for Data Owners and Data Stewards. Configure and validate supported evidence integrations from governance platforms, catalogues, lineage, data-quality, workflow and issue-management sources using approved APIs, connectors or scripts; verify evidence provenance, completeness, accuracy and timeliness with accountable source owners. Conduct discovery with Service Lines, Service Line Quality, Data Owners, Regional Data Stewards, assurance users and control and platform owners to understand business problems and user needs. Engage the data ecosystem, including the Global Data Office (GDO), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs), to translate needs into business, functional and non-functional requirements, capability roadmaps, prioritised backlogs, user stories and measurable acceptance criteria. Maintain requirements traceability and agree priorities, dependencies and trade-offs with accountable product and platform owners. Evaluate platform capabilities against agreed requirements and acceptance criteria; deliver proofs of concept and scoped implementations for continuous governance monitoring, automated evidence, dashboards, stewardship attestations and findings and remediation workflows. Directly configure evidence and metadata models, monitoring rules, workflows, escalation pathways and auditable decision records within authorised environments; coordinate specialist engineering where integrations or platform changes exceed the role's remit. Use agreed acceptance criteria to guide design, build and testing, including applicable non-functional requirements for evidence reliability, access, secure handling and maintainability. Execute configuration and integration tests, coordinate user acceptance testing and defect resolution, and maintain traceable test results and implementation evidence. Prepare release, rollback and support documentation; support approved release, user adoption and operational handover with authorised change and support owners. Agree outcome measures with stakeholders and track business value, adoption and control effectiveness, including evidence coverage, monitoring timeliness, attestation completion, remediation turnaround and stewardship effectiveness. Use findings and user feedback to improve capabilities and reduce manual effort. Report concise governance insights and prioritised improvement actions to accountable stakeholders and governance forums. Provide constructive second-line challenge and facilitate agreement across business, Service Line Quality, data and technology teams on delivery, adoption and governance outcomes, resolving dependencies and escalating decisions outside delegated authority.

Analytical/Decision Making Responsibilities

Exercises the judgement expected of an Associate Director where governance requirements are interpreted inconsistently, evidence is incomplete or accountability is fragmented. Defines the governance objective and risk, triangulates policy requirements, data and evidence, and applies a proportionate assessment methodology. Distinguishes isolated exceptions from systemic issues and determines whether weaknesses arise from local control gaps, unclear standards or ineffective stewardship. Assesses the reliability of self-assessments, indicators, attestations and evidence and reaches defensible conclusions on control design and operating effectiveness. Recommends proportionate remediation and improvement priorities, constructively challenges risk-acceptance proposals and escalates unresolved decisions to accountable owners or the appropriate governance forum. Assesses implementation options, platform constraints, integration dependencies, maintainability and evidence reliability; selects configuration and automation approaches within approved patterns and recommends interim monitoring and evidence arrangements where capability gaps remain. Delivers the design, configuration, integration, testing and implementation evidence for assigned monitoring and stewardship capabilities within delegated authority. Approved policy owners, Data Owners, Data Stewards, designated control owners, product teams and platform owners retain their respective accountabilities. The role does not assume policy ownership, Data Product Owner or Technology Product Owner accountability, enterprise architecture authority, security approval, infrastructure engineering, production change authority or production operations. It recommends or escalates decisions requiring these authorities and coordinates specialist support and operational handover. Maintains second-line independence, clarifies advisory and implementation boundaries and refers formal third-line assurance matters to Internal Audit. Identifies and escalates self-review conflicts and arranges independent review of control-effectiveness conclusions relating to capabilities the role has designed or implemented.

Knowledge and Skills Requirements

Deep expertise in modern data governance, federated operating models, Data Owner and Data Steward accountabilities and decision rights. Strong knowledge of data domains, critical data elements, business glossaries, metadata, lineage, catalogues, data quality and observability. Working knowledge of classification, access, privacy, security, records, retention, data sharing, third-party and cross-border data, and responsible data and AI governance. Expertise in policy-to-control traceability, risk and control self-assessment, control design and operating-effectiveness testing, sampling and evidence evaluation. Experience with management attestation, issue rating, root-cause analysis, remediation validation, governance maturity assessment and executive reporting. Hands-on capability in at least one enterprise governance, monitoring, analytics, workflow or GRC platform relevant to this remit. Ability to model evidence and metadata, configure dashboards, monitoring rules and attestation or remediation workflows, and automate evidence collection and escalation using supported capabilities. Comparable platform experience is valued; expertise in every platform or discipline is not required. Practical technical knowledge of cloud data platforms, source-system APIs, connectors and evidence pipelines. Ability to validate metadata, indicators and evidence, implement supported integrations and diagnose data or integration issues using appropriate platform, query or analytics tools within approved environments. SQL and scripting skills, such as Python, for evidence validation, analysis or automation are desirable but not mandatory. Work with source owners and specialist engineers on issues beyond the scoped solution; infrastructure engineering and production operations remain with designated teams. Ability to translate business and user needs and approved governance requirements into business, functional and non-functional requirements, technical specifications, user stories, evidence schemas, machine-readable monitoring rules, configured workflows and measurable acceptance criteria, maintaining traceability through implementation, testing and control evidence. Strong applied product management skills in user discovery, roadmap development, backlog prioritisation, dependency and trade-off management, iterative delivery, release planning, adoption and business-value measurement. Ability to turn user feedback and control-effectiveness findings into prioritised improvements, balancing monitoring coverage, evidence reliability, usability, risk and delivery constraints. Applies these practices to assigned capabilities in collaboration with accountable product and platform owners, without assuming formal Product Owner accountability. Ability to apply version control, environment separation, configuration and integration testing, defect management, least-privilege access and secure handling of credentials and sensitive evidence. Validates functional and non-functional acceptance criteria, retains test and implementation evidence, and prepares solution, approved deployment, rollback and support documentation for handover to designated change and operational owners. Strong analytical judgement, professional scepticism, facilitation, interviewing, concise report writing and root-cause analysis. Ability to explain technical and governance concepts in practical business language, translate needs into implementable solutions, facilitate decisions, negotiate priorities and resolve dependencies. Builds agreement with business, Service Line Quality, data and technology stakeholders and influences delivery, adoption and outcomes outside the reporting line in a global, federated organisation. Applied knowledge of DAMA-DMBOK and/or EDM Council DCAM to inform governance accountabilities, metadata, data quality and capability assessment, together with relevant data, risk, privacy, security and records standards. Familiarity with EDM Council CDMC for cloud data-management controls and automation is advantageous; these frameworks inform practice rather than imply formal compliance or certification.

Supervision Responsibilities

Operates with a high degree of independence within approved governance, policy and delivery parameters, with direction on major priorities and material accountability decisions. Has no direct reports and no indirect supervisory accountability. Provides specialist functional leadership across monitoring, assurance and stewardship activity; people-management accountability remains with the relevant team leaders.

Other Requirements

Works globally across the Global Data Stewardship Office and partners with the Global Data Office, Client Technology, Enterprise Technology, Information Security, Global Data Protection, General Counsel's Office, relevant Risk and Business Administration teams, Service Lines, Service Line Quality, Regions and EY member firms. Aligns monitoring, assurance and stewardship activity to DSO strategy, the Global Data Stewardship Policy and priorities approved through relevant EY governance forums. Maintains clear accountability boundaries