Senior Associate - Data Governance & Stewardship Lead

New York Life • New York, NY

14d • $100,000 - $143,000 • Remote

About The Position

The GBS Data Governance and Stewardship Leader will establish and scale a sustainable data governance framework as part of the Center of Excellence (COE). This role is responsible for driving data definitions and quality, delivering best‑practice training, and ensuring adherence to governance policies across the organization. As a key member of the COE Data & Analytics team, the leader will partner with IT and business teams to ensure that data can be trusted, remains secure, and is effectively leveraged to support strategic and operational decision‑making.
We are seeking an experienced Data Governance and Stewardship professional to lead the development and execution of a data governance and management framework. This role ensures data consistency, compliance, and integrity across financial and operational domains, including Sales, Underwriting, Operations, Claims, Actuarial, and Finance.
Working closely with business leaders, technology teams, and data professionals, this role supports New York Life’s Data Strategy by enhancing data discoverability, quality, and compliance.
The leader will develop governance policies, standards, and best practices; drive stewardship and ownership across departments; and manage critical initiatives related to data classification, cataloging, quality, access, and usage. Additionally, this role monitors and reports on the performance and compliance of the overall data governance program, ensuring data is well organized, accessible, secure, and valuable.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in data governance, stewardship, or data management.
• Proven experience leading data governance and management initiatives in complex environments.
• Strong Insurance Industry Experience (Group Benefits Industry strongly preferred).
• Strong understanding of data lifecycle management, data quality frameworks, metadata management, and data classification.
• Skilled in data lineage, master data management (MDM), and data cataloging tools.
• Experience implementing and operating a data governance framework across business and technology.
• Experience building governance in federated data environments and across complex/hybrid data ownership structures.
• Strong experience in people and relationship management. Ability to effectively challenge all levels of an organization and offer value-add solutions to meet data governance objectives.
• Familiarity with SQL, Python and data modeling concepts. Working in Agile environments using Jira, Confluence, and SharePoint are a plus.
• Strong understanding of regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Hands-on experience with Atlan or similar metadata management tools. Familiarity with data quality and observability tools (e.g., Anomalo).

Responsibilities

• Develop and lead the implementation of the data governance roadmap.
• Play a key role in establishing an division-wide data governance framework, with a focus on governing data as an enterprise asset, addressing regulatory requirements, and protection of sensitive data through organizational behavior, policies and standards, governance metrics, processes, and related tools.
• Support the mission and goals of the cross-functional Data Governance Council.
• Collaborate with data product managers, SMEs, and engineers to capture business context, align it with technical architecture and strengthen metadata documentation.
• Expand metadata repository to include source-to-target data lineage mapping and Business-friendly names for technical fields.
• Drive adoption of governance tools through training sessions, user enablement, and data owner/steward playbooks.
• Support Governance Technologies: Assist in the implementation and maintenance of platforms such as: Data Catalog (e.g., Collibra, Atlan) Master/Reference Data Management (MDM/RDM) Data Quality tools
• Lead the Data Governance Strategy: Develop and execute a data governance framework that aligns with corporate priorities, regulatory compliance, and business needs.
• Establish Data Stewardship: Build and manage a network of business and technical data stewards. Define roles, responsibilities, and operating procedures. Facilitate Data Stewardship meetings to drive adoption of standards and resolve issues.
• Operationalize Data Governance: Help bring our Data Governance and Data Management framework to life by embedding best practices into project workflows and everyday work.
• Organizational Alignment: Partner with New York Life’s Corporate Data Governance and Data Management teams to ensure alignment.
• Ensure Data Quality & Integrity: Oversee data quality initiatives including management of consolidated data sets.
• Enable Data Standardization: Provide data and business analysis support to harmonize data across the applications.
• Data Ownership & Accountability: Promote accountability and best practices for data stewardship across the organization.
• Policy and Standards Development: Establish data definitions, naming conventions, classification schemas, and metadata standards.
• Regulatory and Risk Compliance: Ensure compliance with privacy, security, and regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA, FINRA, SOC 2, ERISA, GDPR, CCPA, NY DFS etc.).
• Collaboration Across Functions: Serve as a liaison between Business and Technology to ensure that data related business requirements for governing data are clearly defined, communicated, and well understood and considered as part of operational prioritization and planning.
• Tooling and Enablement: Assess and implement data governance technologies as needed and establish usage protocols.
• Change Management: Lead communication, training, and engagement to cultivate a data ownership mindset across the organization.
• Continuous Improvement: Monitor and measure the effectiveness and maturity of the data governance program, and report on key performance indicators and metrics.

Benefits

• We provide a full package of benefits for employees – and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs.
• Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed