Data Governance Lead

Role : Data Governance Lead

Location: Toronto, ON (Hybrid)

Experience: 12+ years

Experience Required

12–16 years overall, including 7+ years in Data Governance/Data Management and 3+ years in a lead or architecture role

Must Have Technical/Functional Skills:

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise data management, with strong expertise across Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata, Data Lineage and Data Observability.
• Proven experience defining and implementing enterprise Data Governance operating models, policies, standards, controls, stewardship structures, decision rights and governance forums.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of business and technical metadata, data catalog, glossary, classification, ownership, critical data elements and end-to-end lineage.
• Deep understanding of Data Quality frameworks, including profiling, rule design, controls, scorecards, issue management, root-cause analysis, remediation and continuous monitoring.
• Experience establishing Data Observability capabilities spanning freshness, volume, schema, distribution, pipeline health, anomalies, incidents, service levels and operational dashboards.
• Ability to integrate governance, quality, lineage and observability controls across cloud, lakehouse, data warehouse, data integration and analytics ecosystems.
• Experience with one or more enterprise platforms such as Collibra, Informatica CDGC/Axon/EDC/IDQ, Microsoft Purview, Alation, Atlan, BigID, Monte Carlo, Bigeye, Databricks Unity Catalog or comparable tools.
• Strong knowledge of data architecture, data modeling, ETL/ELT, APIs, batch/streaming pipelines, SQL and cloud data platforms such as Azure, AWS, Databricks or Snowflake.
• Experience defining governance and quality KPIs/KRIs, control evidence, data issue workflows, auditability and executive reporting.
• Good understanding of privacy, security, retention, regulatory and risk-management expectations relevant to financial services, including BCBS 239, GDPR/CCPA and data-control principles.
• Proven experience leading discovery workshops, current-state assessments, target-state design, roadmaps, tool evaluations, implementation planning and adoption/change initiatives.
• Strong consulting, stakeholder-management and communication skills, with the ability to engage business, risk, compliance, data, engineering and executive stakeholders.
• Preferred certifications in DAMA/CDMP, DCAM, Collibra, Informatica, Microsoft Purview, cloud data platforms, data quality or related disciplines.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of an integrated Data Governance, Data Quality, Data Lineage and Data Observability capability for enterprise data platforms.
• Translate business, regulatory, risk and technology needs into pragmatic governance policies, standards, controls, processes and implementation roadmaps.
• Define the operating model, including accountable data owners, business and technical stewards, governance councils, RACI, escalation paths and decision rights.
• Establish enterprise metadata, business glossary, data catalog, classification, critical data element and ownership practices.
• Design Data Quality lifecycle processes covering profiling, rule definition, thresholds, monitoring, scorecards, issue triage, root-cause analysis and remediation governance.
• Define and operationalize end-to-end lineage from source through transformations to reports, analytics, regulatory outputs and AI use cases.
• Establish observability monitoring for data freshness, completeness, volume, schema, distribution, pipeline reliability, anomalies and data incidents; align alerts with support and remediation workflows.
• Develop control frameworks, KPIs/KRIs, dashboards and executive reporting to demonstrate data health, control effectiveness, risk reduction and adoption.
• Evaluate and configure governance tooling; define integration patterns with data platforms, ETL/ELT, BI, ticketing, CI/CD and cloud services.
• Partner with data architecture, engineering, platform, security, privacy, risk and business teams to embed governance controls within delivery lifecycle and DataOps practices.
• Lead workshops, architecture/design reviews, backlog prioritization, implementation governance, testing, release readiness and production adoption.
• Manage risks, dependencies and issues; provide clear recommendations and escalate decisions requiring senior stakeholder intervention.
• Mentor governance leads, data stewards, analysts and engineers; create reusable accelerators, templates, playbooks and knowledge assets.
• Support Solutioning, proposals, effort estimation, client presentations and capability development for Data Governance and Data Management opportunities.

Generic Managerial Skills, If any

• Strong leadership and stakeholder-management skills across business, technology, risk, compliance and data organizations.
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills for technical, business and executive audiences.
• Consultative problem-solving approach with the ability to simplify complex governance and technology topics.
• Experience leading cross-functional and geographically distributed teams and driving outcomes without direct authority.
• Strong planning, prioritization, facilitation, negotiation, risk management and decision-making skills.
• High ownership, accountability and attention to detail, with a focus on measurable adoption & sustainable operating practices.

Ability to mentor practitioners, influence senior stakeholders and establish an active data stewardship community