Data Governance Lead

Ares Management Corporation•New York, NY

1d•$200,000 - $220,000

About The Position

Ares is seeking a Vice President of Data Governance to own and operationalize data governance across the firm. This person will build the frameworks, policies, and operating processes that make data trustworthy, discoverable, secure, and AI-ready — directly enabling the firm's Enterprise Data Strategy and the AURA AI agent platform. The role sits within the Data & AI team and works across all investment and corporate functions. This is a hands-on, build-from-the-ground-up mandate: the VP will design governance frameworks, stand up the tooling and processes to enforce them, and partner with Legal, Compliance, Risk, Cyber, and business stakeholders to ensure governance keeps pace with an aggressively expanding Data & AI ecosystem.

Requirements

10+ years in data governance, data management, or related roles, with at least 3-5 years in a leadership capacity
Demonstrated experience building data governance programs from scratch, including catalog, classification, quality, and access management frameworks
Hands-on familiarity with modern data platforms — Databricks, Unity Catalog, Azure data services — and how governance is operationalized within them
Working knowledge of AI/ML governance concepts: model risk management, RAG/LLM data handling, responsible AI principles, and emerging AI regulatory frameworks
Experience with PII/data privacy compliance programs and regulatory frameworks (GDPR, CCPA/state privacy laws, etc.)
Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills; able to operate effectively with Legal, Compliance, Risk, Cyber/IAM, and Enablement & Control functions as well as technical and investment teams
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to translate technical governance concepts for non-technical/investment audiences
Experience working within regulated financial services environments
Bachelor's degree required

Nice To Haves

financial services or alternative asset management experience strongly preferred
alternative asset management experience strongly preferred
advanced degree or relevant certifications (CDMP, DAMA, CIMP etc.) a plus

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and continuously mature the firm's end-to-end data governance framework, including policies, standards, operating models, and RACI structures for data ownership and stewardship
Define and drive the firm's data classification scheme (e.g., public, internal, confidential, restricted/PII) and ensure consistent application across Databricks/Unity Catalog and downstream systems
Establish data governance councils/forums and stewardship roles across investment and corporate functions
Align governance roadmap with the Enterprise Data Strategy and the AURA platform roadmap
Own the data catalog strategy and administration (Unity Catalog), including taxonomy, metadata standards, business glossary, lineage tracking, and ownership tagging
Ensure all critical data assets and supporting documents — fund master data, deal data, portfolio data, LP data — are cataloged, documented, and discoverable
Partner with data engineering to embed catalog registration into the medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) as a standard part of the data lifecycle
Partner with Compliance to ensure data meet retention requirements and manage the end-to-end data lifecycle.
Establish an enterprise Data Quality Framework
Define Critical Data Elements (CDEs), data quality standards, metrics, and SLAs for critical data domains (fund, deal, portfolio, investor)
Build data quality monitoring, issue management, and remediation workflows
Develop executive dashboards and governance reporting on quality performance and trends and report quality KPIs to senior stakeholders
Establish root-cause and continuous improvement processes for recurring data quality issues
Define and enforce data access management requirements, including role-based access control, least-privilege principles, and periodic access recertification
Partner closely with IAM in Cyber to align data access management requirements with the firm's broader identity and access management framework, including provisioning, entitlement reviews, and control testing
Own the firm's approach to identifying, classifying, and protecting PII and other sensitive data (e.g., investor data, employee data), including masking, tokenization, and retention requirements
Partner with Cyber and Legal on data privacy compliance (e.g., state privacy laws, GDPR where applicable) and incident response for data exposure events
Define governance requirements specific to AI/agentic systems built on AURA, including: Model & data lineage for AI, AI data access controls, PII handling in AI pipelines, Model risk & output governance, Third-party/LLM vendor governance, AI agent registration & catalog governance, Auditability
Contributing to and maintaining the AI platform governance sign-off process with Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Cyber for new agents and use cases
Serve as the primary governance partner to Legal, Compliance, Risk, and Cyber on all data- and AI-related data governance matters
Act as a key member of the E&C (Enablement and Control) governance group, helping evaluate and enable new AI use cases while ensuring appropriate controls are in place before launch
Educate and enable Business AI Champions and Quant/Technical on governance requirements and self-service compliance
Represent data governance in architecture review boards (ARB) for new data and AI initiatives