Senior Data Governance Engineering Manager

General Motors•Austin, TX

6d•$125,000 - $175,000•Hybrid

About The Position

This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to Austin Technical Center or Warren GM Global Technical Center three times per week, at minimum [or other frequency dictated by the business if more than 3 days]. At General Motors, data governance enables trusted, secure, and well-managed data products that support analytics, engineering, operations, and business decision-making across the enterprise. This role helps translate governance strategy into repeatable operating practices by aligning policy, stewardship, tooling, and cross-functional execution. The Senior Data Governance Team Lead is a senior leadership role responsible for driving governance execution across data domains, leading stewardship and operational processes, and improving how teams manage data quality, access, metadata, classification, and compliance. This role partners closely with business stakeholders, technical teams, privacy, cybersecurity, legal, and platform teams to ensure governance requirements are practical, measurable, and consistently applied. This role is also expected to strengthen governance adoption through process improvement, automation, metrics, and communication. Success in this position requires strong leadership, sound judgment, and the ability to turn complex governance requirements into clear workflows, accountability, and business outcomes.

Requirements

7 to 8 years of relevant experience
2+ years of experience leading/developing engineering teams in a platform, data, or marketing technology environment
Bachelor’s degree in information systems, engineering, computer science, business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Significant experience in data governance, data management, data quality, data stewardship, analytics enablement, or related disciplines.
Experience leading people, programs, or cross-functional initiatives in environments that require stakeholder alignment and operational accountability.
Strong understanding of data governance principles including metadata, lineage, access control, classification, privacy, retention, compliance, and stewardship.
Experience creating or improving governance processes, standards, or control frameworks that support scalable adoption.
Experience defining metrics, measuring outcomes, and using dashboards or reporting to drive accountability and continuous improvement.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate complex requirements into clear guidance for both technical and non-technical audiences.
Strong problem-solving, prioritization, and change leadership skills in environments with multiple stakeholders and evolving requirements.
Lead with ownership and follow-through.
Entrepreneurial mindset.
Build trust across business and technical stakeholders.
Create clarity in ambiguous situations.
Balance governance rigor with practical execution.
Develop people, improve processes, and raise the standard for enterprise data management.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting governance processes for external or inbound data exchanges, contractual data obligations, or regulated data handling.
Experience with enterprise data governance tooling for metadata, access, data quality, or monitoring.
Experience designing governance dashboards, scorecards, or operational KPI reporting.
Experience building training, communications, or adoption programs that improve governance maturity across large organizations.
Experience working in matrixed environments that require influence across engineering, business, risk, legal, and shared services teams.

Responsibilities

Lead and evolve the operating model for data governance across supported teams and domains, including stewardship engagement, issue escalation, standards adoption, and cross-functional coordination.
Provide day-to-day leadership for governance activities covering policy adherence, metadata management, data classification, access governance, lineage expectations, and data quality practices.
Partner with business owners, technical stewards, domain teams, privacy, cybersecurity, legal, and platform partners to align governance requirements with business and technical implementation plans.
Drive execution of governance processes for inbound and external data exchanges, including intake, review, documentation, compliance validation, audit readiness, and lifecycle management.
Establish and improve governance workflows for onboarding, access setup, control evidence, and ownership alignment so teams can adopt governance requirements with less friction and greater consistency.
Build and maintain governance metrics, dashboards, and reporting that measure health, compliance, stewardship activity, quality trends, training adoption, and operational outcomes.
Identify opportunities to automate governance controls, monitoring, and intake processes to improve scale, reduce manual effort, and strengthen consistency.
Lead governance communications, training, and community engagement efforts to improve clarity, adoption, and accountability across stakeholders.
Support and guide data stewards by clarifying expectations, improving role effectiveness, and ensuring stewardship activities are tied to practical business and technical outcomes.
Surface governance risks, gaps, and recommendations to leadership, and help prioritize remediation based on business impact, compliance exposure, and operational need.