Senior Data Governance Manager, Marcom

Apple•Sunnyvale, CA

23h

About The Position

The Senior Data Governance Manager owns Marcom’s data governance strategy and infrastructure, ensuring that data used by AI tools, models, workflows, and business decisions is classified, protected, accessible to the appropriate people, and reliable. The role will chart and drive the path to a centralized data lake where Marcom data is managed, cataloged, and governed, with operational tools integrating through APIs and MCPs rather than maintaining siloed copies. The position is part of Governance and Technology Operations (GTO), which builds governance frameworks and operates technology and infrastructure for Marcom. The role reports to the head of GTO and partners closely with IS&T, Procurement, Security, and cross-functional Marcom and Marketing organizations. It serves as a primary governance liaison with Legal, Privacy, Security, IS&T, Marcom Analytics, and Procurement, as well as Product Marketing, Corporate Communications, and Services Marketing.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in data governance, data architecture, data management, or a related discipline, including leadership of programs at scale.
Track record of building and operationalizing data governance frameworks, including data quality management, metadata management, and access control.
Experience defining data classification, lineage, and access control policies across complex organizations, including role-based, attribute-based, or equivalent models for data with tiered confidentiality.
Working knowledge of data architecture patterns, including data lakes, warehouses, and pipelines, and how they support AI and machine learning workloads.
Experience designing or governing centralized data platforms with API-based integration patterns.
Understanding of role-based and attribute-based access control models in environments with tiered confidentiality or disclosure requirements.
Demonstrated ability to influence and align senior stakeholders and explain data concepts in business terms to non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

Experience governing data that feeds AI and machine learning systems, including training data quality, bias detection, and data provenance.
Background working alongside data science teams and understanding their data needs, with a focus on governance that enables their work.
Familiarity with data catalog and metadata management tools, cloud data platforms, modern data stack technologies, and automated data validation approaches.
Familiarity with API gateway patterns and emerging AI integration approaches such as MCP.
Experience in marketing, creative, or media environments, including understanding campaign data, creative assets, and audience data where sensitivity and pre-announcement confidentiality are critical.
Knowledge of data quality frameworks and automated data validation approaches.

Responsibilities

Define and own Marcom’s data governance strategy and framework, covering data quality, classification, lineage, ownership, retention, and access control.
Architect and drive implementation of a centralized data lake where Marcom data is managed, cataloged, and governed, with operational tools integrating through APIs and MCPs.
Establish data quality standards, validation processes, and monitoring systems to ensure accuracy and completeness across Marcom’s data assets.
Build data lineage and provenance tracking so teams can understand data origins and transformations.
Define data classification and sensitivity policies in coordination with the AI Governance Lead, AI Security Engineer, and Apple Information Security.
Enforce disclosure-based access governance so data access is granted only at the appropriate disclosure level.
Create and maintain a data catalog and metadata management practice that helps teams discover, understand, and trust available data.
Establish data ownership and stewardship models that clarify accountability at every level.
Work with the AI PMO and engineering teams to define data readiness criteria for AI initiatives, ensuring data is governed before entering model training, fine-tuning, or inference pipelines.
Set integration governance standards for tools connecting to the data lake, covering authentication, data freshness, write-back validation, and audit logging.
Partner with the Tools Governance Lead to ensure operational tools meet data requirements before adoption.
Serve as the primary governance liaison between Marcom and cross-functional partners including Legal, Privacy, Security, IS&T, Marcom Analytics, and Procurement, and adjacent Marketing organizations including Product Marketing, Corporate Communications, and Services Marketing.