Data Governance Manager/Senior Manager - Hybrid

TrueCar, Inc.•Santa Monica, CA

11d•$141,000 - $188,000•Hybrid

About The Position

TrueCar is a leading automotive digital marketplace operating at the intersection of car shoppers, Certified Dealers, and OEMs. Our business runs on data: shopper behavior and pricing data, OEM incentive and marketing data, dealer inventory and transaction data, and increasingly, TrueCar+ end-to-end purchase and financing data. As that data footprint grows across products, partners, and platforms, we need strong governance to keep it accurate, well-understood, secure, and compliant. We're hiring a Data Governance Manager (or Senior Manager) to build and maintain TrueCar's enterprise data landscape: a living, authoritative map of what data we collect, where it comes from, where it lives, how long we keep it, and who can touch it. You'll work across Data Platform/Engineering, Legal & Privacy, Security, Dealer & OEM Product, Marketing Solutions, and Consumer Product teams to bring order and accountability to how consumer, transaction, and vehicle data move through TrueCar's systems — and you'll be a key driver of our SOC 2 compliance program. The ideal candidate will be located near Santa Monica, CA, and available to work in our headquarters office as needed.

Requirements

5+ years in data governance, data management, data privacy, or a related discipline — marketplace, fintech, or automotive experience is a strong plus.
Hands-on experience with data catalog/governance tooling (e.g., Collibra, Alation, Atlan, Purview) and cloud data warehouse platforms (e.g., Redshift).
Direct experience supporting SOC 2 (or similar frameworks like ISO 27001) audits — building control evidence, working with auditors, and closing remediation items.
Working knowledge of consumer privacy and data-handling regulations relevant to a consumer marketplace (CCPA/CPRA, TCPA/CAN-SPAM, FCRA-adjacent handling of credit data).
Strong SQL skills for data discovery and validation, and comfort working directly in warehouse/data platform environments.
Ability to translate complex, cross-system data flows into clear documentation for both engineers and business stakeholders.
Excellent cross-functional collaboration skills — this role partners daily with Engineering, Legal, Security, Marketing Solutions, and Dealer/OEM Product teams.
Experience building or maturing a governance program from an early stage is a strong plus.

Nice To Haves

Experience with dealer, OEM, or affinity-partner data-sharing ecosystems.
Familiarity with consent management and data subject request (DSAR) tooling.
Exposure to AI/ML data pipelines and the governance considerations around model training data and personalization.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain a full inventory of TrueCar's core data domains: consumer/shopper data (leads, profiles, contact info, on-site behavior, credit pre-qualification inputs), transaction data (TrueCar+ purchases, financing submissions, trade-in appraisals, dealer/OEM incentive redemptions), and vehicle data (VIN-level inventory, pricing, Value Report/pricing certificate data, OEM incentives).
Document end-to-end data flows: consumer intake via TrueCar.com, the mobile app, and affinity partner sites (Sam's Club, AAA, Navy Federal, American Express, etc.); dealer inventory and pricing feeds; OEM incentive and marketing data; downstream flows into the data warehouse, CRM/lead distribution systems, and analytics/ML pipelines used for personalization and lead scoring.
Maintain data flow diagrams and a searchable data catalog (source, system of record, transformations, consuming teams) that stays current as TrueCar and new affinity partnerships evolve.
Classify data assets by sensitivity (PII, financial/credit-related data, dealer-confidential pricing data, regulated data) and maintain consistent tagging across catalog and platform tooling.
Partner with Data Engineering to instrument lineage tracking so new pipelines are captured automatically, not through manual after-the-fact documentation.
Maintain the system-of-record inventory: which platform stores each data domain (data warehouse, operational databases, CRM/lead management, data lake, third-party SaaS tools used by Marketing Solutions and Dealer Products).
Define and document retention schedules by data type — e.g., active shopper/lead data, TrueCar+ transaction and financing records, dealer/OEM contractual data, marketing and advertising data — in partnership with Legal on requirements such as state privacy laws, FCRA-adjacent handling of credit-related information, and TCPA/CAN-SPAM considerations for consumer outreach data.
Drive automated enforcement of retention and deletion policies with Data Engineering; audit for stale, duplicated, or orphaned data across environments (production, analytics sandboxes, vendor exports).
Support secure decommissioning of data when partner relationships (affinity partners, dealers, data vendors) end.
Maintain a current access inventory: which roles, teams, and systems can access each data domain, and the business justification for that access.
Implement least-privilege access controls in partnership with Security/IT, including role-based access for internal teams and scoped, contractually-bounded access for dealer and OEM data-sharing integrations.
Own periodic access reviews and certifications; manage the access request/approval workflow for new systems, reports, and integrations touching consumer, transaction, or vehicle data.
Monitor and remediate over-privileged or unused access as part of ongoing governance hygiene.
Serve as a core contributor to TrueCar's SOC 2 Type II compliance program: maintain evidence for data governance-related controls (data classification, retention, access reviews, data flow documentation) across audit cycles.
Partner with Security and Internal Audit to remediate control gaps identified during SOC 2 readiness assessments and annual audits; track corrective action items to closure.
Support additional compliance and audit needs as they arise — e.g., CCPA/CPRA and other state privacy law obligations, dealer/OEM data-sharing agreement audits, and vendor security/data-handling reviews.
Maintain documentation (policies, control narratives, process runbooks) in a state that's audit-ready year-round, not just during audit season.
Own and evolve TrueCar's data governance policies and standards: classification, retention, access, data quality, and data-sharing agreements with dealers, OEMs, and affinity partners.
Embed governance requirements into the design phase of new products and pipelines (e.g., TrueCar+ feature launches, new affinity partner integrations) by partnering early with Engineering and Product.
Support consumer data subject requests (access, deletion, opt-out) with accurate lineage and retention data.
Track data quality issues at their source and drive resolution with data-owning teams.
Report on data governance maturity, open risks, and remediation roadmaps to Data & Analytics leadership and relevant governance/risk committees.
Develop and deliver training so teams across TrueCar understand governance policies and their own data responsibilities.