Director of Data Governance

About the role

OH0713 NW Bancshares HQ

About the role

The Director of Data Governance establishes and leads Northwest Bank's enterprise data governance strategy, policies, and operating model. This role will ensure data quality, integrity, and security while supporting compliance with regulations while serving as a bridge between business leaders, legal teams, and IT.

Essential Functions

• Strategy & Frameworks: Develop the vision and roadmap for organizational information governance, master data management, and data architecture.
• Policy Development: Design and implement data policies, standards, classification schemes, and data lifecycle management practices.
• Data Quality Management: Establish metrics and incident-management processes to identify and resolve root causes of data errors.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with data stewards, IT, and legal teams to enforce data privacy, compliance, and responsible AI/analytics practices
• Research new technologies and evaluate their potential to add value in support of business, data team and operational needs
• Provide technical leadership for development, engineering, and the database team
• Enforce adherence to established architecture by providing review of planned changes
• Partner with IT leadership team to enable their success
• Leads ideation, implementation, and integration of technical strategies to assure achievement of business strategy
• Determine modeling standards, guidelines, best practices and approved modeling techniques
• Document modeling standards / guidelines; present to developers & analysts for buy in
• Serves as a trusted technology consultant to IT and executive management for complex multi-platform technology solutions
• Work with engineering and development teams on selection of hardware and software solutions to ensure alignment with company strategy
• Directs the assessment of integration impacts of new technology
• Ensures technology risks are identified and mitigated in accordance with business risk appetite
• Lead design of meaningful metrics to be used in IT Steering Committees
• Monitor system performance, identify and address bottlenecks
• Lead ideation for infrastructure tuning improvements
• Provide technical assistance and solution for escalated issues

Additional Essential Functions

• Ensure compliance with Northwest's policies and procedures, and Federal/State regulations
• Navigate Microsoft Office Software, computer applications, and software specific to the department in order to maximize technology tools and gain efficiency
• Work as part of a team
• Work with on-site equipment

What You Bring to the Team

• Leadership: Proven ability to drive stakeholder alignment, manage data trust councils, and translate technical data constraints into business implications.
• Technical Fluency: Familiarity with modern data platforms (Databricks & Collibra preferred), data catalogs, and business intelligence/AI tools

Qualifications

Education

Bachelor's Degree Computer Science, Information Science or Engineering or related subject

Work Experience

8 - 12 years Data governance, data quality, and analytics operations

Additional Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Ability to establish effective working relationships among team members and participate in solving problems and making decisions
• Ability to present and express ideas and information clearly and concisely in a manner appropriate to the audience, whether oral or written
• Ability to actively listen to what others are saying to achieve understanding, sharing information with others and facilitating the open exchange of ideas and information
• Ability to establish courses of action for self to accomplish specific goals, develop and use tracking systems for monitoring own work progress, and effectively use resources such as time and information
• Ability to make right decisions based on perceptive and analytical processes, practicing good judgment in gray areas
• Ability to function with autonomy, establish relationships, and influence decisions
• Skill in utilizing technology with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and predictive analytics to help drive customer experiences
• Skill in expertise in design and implementation of complex information architectures for financial institutions
• Ability to think strategically, innovate, and manage organizations during change
• Communication and presentations skills
• Ability to manage multiple priorities, prioritizing service delivery to and setting expectations with stakeholders
• Ability to negotiating using a win-win strategy and producing positive business outcomes

Licenses and Certifications