Director, Data & Standards

Position Overview

The Director, Data & Standards leads API's data analyst team and owns the standards, governance, and quality practices that make our data trustworthy and usable across the organization. The role also carries forward key parts of API's AI Enablement program: running AI experiments and pilots, driving adoption of enterprise AI tools, and using AI to improve how the data team works and the insights it delivers. You will balance hands-on AI and analytics work with leadership of the team, setting direction, developing people, and raising the bar on how API defines, measures, and uses data. This is a remote position.

Essential Functions

• Team leadership and analytics oversight
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of data analysts, including hiring, goal setting, performance management, and career growth.
• Set priorities and manage the team's workload across Engineering, Client Delivery, and Corporate stakeholders.
• Review analyst work for accuracy, clarity, and business relevance, and ensure reporting and analysis are timely and decision-ready.
• Build a culture of curiosity, ownership, and continuous learning, including AI fluency across the team.
• Data standards and governance
• Define and maintain enterprise data standards, including metric definitions, naming conventions, documentation, and a shared data dictionary.
• Establish data quality monitoring, validation processes, and issue-resolution workflows, and drive remediation with data owners.
• Partner with IT, Engineering, and Security on data access, lifecycle management, and compliance requirements.
• Serve as the authority on "one version of the truth" for key operational and commercial metrics.
• AI experimentation and pilots
• Run intake, hypothesis design, metric definition, and outcome documentation for data and AI experiments across the organization.
• Lead go/no-go reviews and graduation-to-production decisions for AI pilots, owning validation evidence, vendor coordination, and integration readiness.
• Evaluate AI outputs for accuracy and reliability, and set quality standards for AI-generated analysis.
• AI adoption and enablement
• Partner to drive training, communications, and enablement for Claude Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot, moving seat utilization from license to behavior.
• Produce the monthly AI scorecard: experiments launched, seats utilized, automation rates, FTE-equivalent savings, and experiments graduated.
• Co-lead AI Sandbox operations with Engineering, including use-case intake, prioritization, and graduation criteria.
• Work with IT and internal stakeholders to identify gaps, surface high-value use cases, and improve return on AI spend.
• Vendor and budget management
• Manage relationships with data and AI tooling vendors and track spend against the approved plan, flagging variances.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience in data analytics, business intelligence, data governance, or a related field.
• Working personal fluency with Claude (mandatory) and other enterprise AI tooling (Microsoft Copilot or equivalent), with demonstrated ability to design and document hypothesis-driven experiments.
• Experience defining data standards, metrics, or governance practices in a cross-functional environment.
• Strong SQL and experience with BI and visualization tools.
• Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to produce executive- and board-quality materials.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity within a small, fast-moving team.

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical background in computer science, engineering, data, or comparable hands-on experience with software, automation, or AI systems.
• Experience with data warehousing, data modeling, and data quality tooling.
• Exposure to voice AI, document automation, or contact-center modernization.
• Prior experience in a PE-portfolio company or other high-growth, lean environment.
• Experience in travel, transportation, or logistics.

Education

• Bachelor's degree required.
• Technical or quantitative field (computer science, engineering, economics, mathematics, data science) preferred.
• Advanced degree welcome but not required.

Compensation

The good faith compensation is $120,000 - $140,000, USD.

Compensation is determined based on several factors, including the candidate's experience, qualifications, and skill set, geographic location, as well as internal alignment and external benchmarks.

Other Duties

• Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time according to business needs.
• The performance of additional responsibilities if you are designated as a Data Protection Champion (DPC), Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) or Information Assurance Accounting Officer (IAAO).

Work Environment

This position operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines.

Physical Demands

• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.
• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear.
• The employee frequently is required to stand, walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms.