Data Governance Lead

1. General Summary

• Full?time, onsite role in San Diego, CA (5 days/week).
• Serves as the enterprise Data Governance Lead, responsible for developing, implementing, and overseeing governance frameworks, data quality programs, metadata management, and observability across the organization.
• Operates with high autonomy, providing technical leadership, strategic influence, and guidance to senior stakeholders and data teams.

2. Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Information Management, Computer Science, Business Administration, or related field.
• Minimum:
  • 5+ years IT-relevant experience with a Bachelor’s OR
  • 7+ years without a Bachelor’s.
• 10+ years experience leading data governance strategies in large enterprise (Fortune 500 preferred).
• Strong knowledge of data governance frameworks, data privacy/security regulations, and master data management.
• Excellent communication, leadership, and stakeholder?management skills.
• Experience with governance tools such as Collibra, Informatica; plus experience with Acceldata, Databricks, and Unity Catalog.

3. Core Responsibilities

• Establish and enforce enterprise-wide data governance, quality rules, validation policies, and KPIs.
• Implement scalable data quality frameworks across ingestion ? transformation ? consumption.
• Use Acceldata, Databricks, and Unity Catalog for profiling, scoring, observability, lineage, and incident root-cause analysis.
• Build reusable modules for data validation, monitoring schema drift, detecting anomalies, and scoring reliability.
• Develop dashboards for pipeline health, latency, throughput, and compliance indicators.
• Manage metadata and lineage using Collibra and Unity Catalog.
• Support governance planning, steward training, backlog refinement, and documentation.
• Collaborate with business owners to baseline quality scores and track issue resolution.
• Stay current on emerging data governance and engineering technologies; contribute to enterprise data strategy.

4. Level of Responsibility & Impact

• Operates independently with no supervision; decisions carry significant impact on programs, finances, and enterprise objectives.
• Provides architectural guidance and mentorship to junior engineers; reviews code and enforces engineering best practices.
• Frequently consults with senior leadership, influencing key organizational decisions.
• Requires strong written and verbal communication across diverse audiences; may engage in negotiation and large?group communication.
• High degree of creativity and advanced problem?solving required, often with incomplete or conflicting information.
• Occasionally participates in strategic planning impacting immediate operations.