Director, Data Management & Governance

Live Oak Banking•Wilmington, NC

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Live Oak Bank is a digital bank serving small business owners nationwide, driven by a mission to be America’s Small Business Bank through innovative service and technology. The Director, Data Management & Governance plays a crucial role in managing the bank's data as a strategic asset. This role owns the data management, data quality, data governance, and data stewardship programs, aiming to mature these areas and integrate them into daily operations. The position also focuses on preparing data foundations for AI and agentic systems. It's a player-coach role, requiring close collaboration with the data team, business stakeholders, and leadership, with opportunities for team growth. The role is based at the Wilmington, NC headquarters or within commuting distance in NC, VA, or SC.

Requirements

8+ years in data management, data quality, data governance, or related fields.
3+ years 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 work.
Experience leading a data stewardship or similar cross-functional data community.
Data governance experience—designing and running programs proportionate to the risk and regulatory environment.
Working knowledge of modern data platforms like Databricks, Unity Catalog, dbt, Fivetran, cloud data warehouses.
Strong communication skills across various audiences (business SMEs, Data Stewards, technical partners, regulators).
Comfortable in a player-coach model, doing the work as much 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 Monte Carlo, Bigeye, Anomalo, or similar data quality monitoring tools.
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.
Shape a data management agenda that supports the bank's strategic direction.
Work directly with the business to resolve complex data issues and identify process improvements for data quality at the source.
Partner with the CDAO and D&A leadership to prioritize team investments.
Lead the 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 language for data between business and technical teams.
Prepare data foundations for AI and agentic consumption by ensuring quality, semantic clarity, and robust metadata.
Own the 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.
Use 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.
Serve as the data governance voice on the bank-wide vendor management program, participating in reviews and third-party risk assessments.
Partner with Information Security, Compliance, Risk, Internal Audit, and regulators.
Lead, coach, and develop the data management, data quality, and data governance team, and shape its growth.