Director of Data (P&C Insurance)

Sutton National Insurance Company

About The Position

Sutton National Group seeks a Director of Data to own and drive the company’s enterprise data strategy. The role sets the vision, governance, and execution roadmap for organizational data, with a primary focus on premium and loss data in the Sutton Data Warehouse (SDW), built on Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Factory. The Director will mature the company’s data practice and establish standards, processes, and capabilities that help the business trust, access, and use its data. The role also advances citizen development by enabling business users in underwriting, claims, finance, actuarial, and compliance to serve their data needs through governed tools and structured training. This senior leadership position combines technical expertise in modern data platforms with strategic leadership and responsibility for building a high-performing data culture in a growing insurance carrier. The Director owns the SDW as the authoritative source for premium and loss data; leads platform architecture, governance, monitoring, and continuous improvement; and builds and develops the data team. The role partners with business leaders and teams to support underwriting analysis, actuarial reserving, financial reporting, regulatory submissions, and program performance monitoring.

Requirements

Deep expertise in enterprise data strategy, data architecture, and data platform development in complex, multi-source environments.
Strong knowledge of Microsoft Fabric, including Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, Dataflows, Pipelines, and Semantic Models.
Strong knowledge of Azure Data Factory, including pipelines, linked services, triggers, and data flows.
Proficiency in SQL and experience with Python or PySpark for data engineering and transformation.
Strong understanding of P&C insurance data, including premium and loss data structures, regulatory reporting requirements, and program management workflows.
Demonstrated experience building and leading data governance programs covering data quality, lineage, stewardship, and metadata management.
Proven ability to design and implement citizen development programs that balance accessibility, governance, and data integrity.
Experience building and developing data teams in a growth-stage organization.
Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to translate data strategy into business value for executive and non-technical audiences.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on scalable, sustainable, and well-documented data solutions.
Experience with Power BI semantic model design, report governance, and enterprise deployment best practices.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, or data management, including 5+ years in a senior or director-level data leadership role.
Proven experience owning enterprise data warehousing or lakehouse platforms at scale, with hands-on expertise in Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Factory.
8+ years of experience in the Property & Casualty insurance industry, with familiarity with premium, loss, and program data.
Demonstrated success defining and executing a data strategy that delivered measurable business impact across multiple departments.
Experience building or leading citizen development or data self-service programs across a diverse business user base.
Track record of establishing data governance frameworks and data quality programs in a regulated industry environment.
Experience leading and developing high-performing data teams in a fast-paced, growth-oriented organization.

Nice To Haves

An advanced degree is preferred.

Responsibilities

Define, own, and execute the enterprise data strategy in alignment with company growth objectives, regulatory requirements, and operational priorities.
Establish and maintain data governance frameworks for ownership, stewardship, data quality, metadata, lineage, and access controls.
Serve as executive sponsor for data policy decisions and ensure consistency and compliance across data assets.
Develop and maintain a prioritized data roadmap for underwriting, claims, finance, actuarial, compliance, and program management.
Define data quality, platform performance, and adoption KPIs, and report strategic progress to executive leadership.
Own the strategic design and ongoing development of the Sutton Data Warehouse (SDW) in Microsoft Fabric as the authoritative source for premium and loss data.
Oversee ingestion, transformation, and loading of premium and loss data from program partners, carriers, and internal systems through Azure Data Factory pipelines.
Define and enforce standards and business rules for policy, endorsement, cancellation, claims, and financial settlement data.
Ensure premium and loss data is structured, validated, and available for business analysis, reserving, reporting, regulatory submissions, and program monitoring.
Partner with finance, actuarial, and compliance teams to validate premium and loss data and resolve discrepancies at their sources.
Maintain data dictionaries, lineage maps, and documentation for SDW datasets and domains.
Own the Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Factory platforms, including architecture, configuration, capacity planning, security, and development.
Improve Azure Data Factory ELT/ETL pipeline architecture for efficiency, reliability, and scalability.
Govern Fabric workspaces, including Lakehouse design, semantic models, medallion architecture, and data-sharing configurations.
Evaluate and adopt Microsoft Fabric capabilities and Azure data services as the platform evolves.
Partner with the Manager of Enterprise Applications to ensure application integrations feed clean, well-structured data into the SDW.
Establish monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes for data platform components to support availability and data freshness.
Build and mature the company’s data practice through scalable frameworks and standards for data engineering, analytics, and reporting.
Lead continuous improvement of data workflows, tools, and team capabilities.
Define and implement data product management practices, with clear ownership, SLAs, and quality commitments for data assets.
Promote best practices in data modeling, documentation, testing, and version control.
Build and lead a team of data engineers, analytics engineers, and data analysts, setting expectations and supporting professional development.
Design and lead a citizen development program that enables business users to build and consume data products within governed frameworks.
Establish guardrails, training, and support for self-service reporting and analytics in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric while protecting data integrity and governance.
Partner with department heads to identify and prioritize citizen development use cases.
Develop and deliver data literacy programs, training materials, and enablement resources.
Define certification or tiering models for citizen developers to support appropriate access, accountability, and quality.
Champion a data-driven culture and demonstrate the value of trusted, accessible data across the organization.