Data Governance / Target Operating Model (TOM) Lead

Synechron•New York, NY

About The Position

Synechron is seeking an experienced Data Governance & Operating Model Lead to design and implement a federated data-governance model in a banking or capital-markets environment. The role will establish a canonical business taxonomy, define domain boundaries, assign accountable producing domains, and develop producer-consumer data contracts. The lead will turn dependency and lineage findings into practical ownership, stewardship, and contract obligations, embedding the target governance model in the organization’s architecture and operating practices. The position requires enterprise-scale experience, the ability to resolve ambiguous ownership decisions, and the ability to produce practical governance artifacts that can be defended to internal audit, regulators, and senior stakeholders. Responsibilities include normalizing the taxonomy and metadata standards; defining documented domain-boundary tests; assigning one accountable producing domain to every item and recording rationale; resolving contested items through DACI; defining consumer domains and contract obligations; drafting ODCS-aligned data contracts; establishing an ownership and stewardship operating model; defining governance controls for the target-state architecture; and advising on adoption sequencing and interim accountability arrangements. The position offers a competitive compensation and benefits package. The base salary varies by geography and other factors; for a role filled in New York, NY, the stated range is $130,000–$145,000 per year, plus benefits.

Requirements

10+ years of data governance experience within banking or capital markets.
5+ years leading governance or target operating model design at enterprise scale.
Federated governance design experience and evidence of a model adopted by domain teams; the posting asks candidates to provide adoption evidence.
Experience applying Domain-Driven Design context mapping to data domains.
Working familiarity with FIBO and BIAN service domains as sources for canonical boundaries.
Experience with data contract standards such as ODCS or equivalent, and metadata registry standards such as ISO/IEC 11179.
Regulatory grounding to support defensible governance under examination, including BCBS 239 principles, critical data element definition and coverage, Dodd-Frank, and MiFID II.
Practical facility with catalogue, lineage, and data-quality tools such as Unity Catalog, Microsoft Purview, Collibra, Alation, Solidatus, Securiti.ai, and Anomalo.
Ability to write decision rationales that remain defensible to internal audit.

Nice To Haves

Experience producing a domain-assignment matrix with rationale using Excel and DDD context mapping.
Experience producing a refined domain taxonomy and boundary definitions using Word, DDD, and FIBO.
Experience producing a target operating model for ownership and stewardship using Word and RACI.
Experience producing provisional producer-consumer data contracts in YAML or Excel using ODCS.

Responsibilities

Agree the taxonomy normalization method and metadata standard, using ISO/IEC 11179.
Establish documented boundary tests based on business capability rather than schema, origination rather than usage, change cadence and cohesion, and accountability for the business decision supported by the data.
Normalize the inventory into a canonical, FIBO-informed taxonomy with explicit boundary definitions and collapsed variants.
Assign exactly one accountable producing domain to every item and produce a domain-assignment matrix with written rationale using DDD context mapping.
Resolve multi-domain and contested items through DACI; decompose cross-domain stored procedures into producer-held origination logic and consumer-side derivation products rather than treating them as shared.
Translate dependency and lineage maps into named consuming domains and contract obligations for every UI, extract feed, and downstream application.
Draft provisional producer-consumer data contracts to ODCS, specifying schema and semantics, quality SLOs, freshness and availability, access and entitlement, versioning, and change and deprecation.
Define the target operating model for Domain Owner, Data Product Owner, Data Steward, and Platform team, including a stewardship RACI that names real people or positions.
Supply the governance-plane definition to the target-state architecture, including taxonomy conformance, contract registry, policy-as-code, quality SLOs, and access entitlement enforced at publication.
Advise on adoption sequencing, identifying domains ready to hold accountability immediately and domains requiring an interim arrangement.

Benefits

10 days of paid annual leave, plus sick leave and national holidays.
Maternity and paternity leave plans.
Comprehensive insurance plan including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and long- and short-term disability; plans vary by region.
Retirement savings plans.
Higher education certification policy.
Commuter benefits, varying by region.
Extensive training opportunities focused on skills, substantive knowledge, and personal development.
On-demand Udemy for Business access to more than 5,000 curated courses.
Coaching opportunities with colleagues from FinLabs and CoE groups.
Possibility to work abroad.
Flexible workplace arrangements, mentoring, internal mobility, and learning and development programs.