Director, Data Management & Governance

Live Oak Bank•Remote - NC, NC

1d•$190,180 - $262,140

About The Position

Live Oak Bank is a digital bank serving small business owners nationwide, focused on providing products that help customers buy, build, and expand their businesses, as well as grow their savings. The bank prioritizes employee well-being, believing employees are the heart of the company and that commitment to customers and culture are intertwined. The Director, Data Management & Governance plays a crucial role in managing data as a strategic asset, influencing the bank's capabilities in analytics, business decision-making, and customer service. This role leads the data management, data quality, data governance, and data stewardship programs, building upon existing foundations to mature these areas and integrate them into daily operations. The goal is to ensure data quality is embedded in business processes, semantic clarity is part of team communication, and governance acts as an enabler. Additionally, this role prepares data for AI and agentic systems. It is a player-coach position, requiring close collaboration with a small team, the business, and direct involvement in shaping outcomes. There is potential to grow the team as the program expands.

Requirements

8+ years in data management, data quality, data governance, or related fields.
3+ years of experience leading teams.
Strong track record of business partnership, translating business strategy and operational needs into data outcomes.
Deep hands-on experience with data quality practices, tooling, and operational quality improvement.
Experience leading a data stewardship or similar cross-functional data community.
Data governance experience, including designing and running programs proportionate to the risk and regulatory environment.
Working knowledge of modern data platforms such as Databricks, Unity Catalog, dbt, Fivetran, and cloud data warehouses.
Strong communication skills across various audiences, including business SMEs, Data Stewards, technical partners, and regulators.
Comfortable in a player-coach model, actively participating in the work as well as directing it.

Nice To Haves

AI-related data governance experience.
Experience in banking or another regulated financial services environment.
Experience implementing or maturing a data retention program.
Familiarity with data quality monitoring tools like Monte Carlo, Bigeye, or Anomalo.
Experience with data catalog tools (Unity Catalog, Alation, Atlan, Collibra) and metadata management approaches.
Exposure to model risk management or SR 11-7.
Exposure to third-party risk management processes in financial services.
Background supporting Data Science or ML teams.

Responsibilities

Build deep relationships with business leaders to understand their strategy, goals, data usage, pain points, and growth opportunities.
Align the data management agenda with the bank's strategic direction.
Work directly with the business to resolve complex data issues and improve data quality at the source through process evolution.
Partner with the CDAO and D&A leadership to prioritize team investments.
Lead Live Oak's data quality program, expanding monitoring, reducing exceptions, and building data trust.
Own metadata management in the data platform, including the business glossary, classification, and lineage.
Advance the semantic layer to foster a common data language between business and technical teams.
Prepare data foundations for AI and agentic consumption by ensuring quality, semantic clarity, and robust metadata.
Own Live Oak's relationship with Monte Carlo, the data quality monitoring platform.
Lead the Data Stewardship program, supporting stewards, managing its operating rhythm, and growing the community.
Partner with stewards to embed data quality checks into daily work, making DQ an operational practice.
Utilize the Stewardship community as a channel for business context in data decisions and data awareness in business teams.
Continue maturing the data governance program, evolving policies, standards, and processes in response to bank growth and regulatory shifts.
Serve as the data governance representative on the bank-wide vendor management program, participating in vendor reviews and third-party risk processes involving data.
Partner with Information Security, Compliance, Risk, Internal Audit, and external regulators.
Lead, coach, and develop the data management, data quality, and data governance team, and shape its growth.