Senior Data Governance & Responsible AI Lead

Sand Tech Holdings Limited

About The Position

Sand Technologies is seeking a Senior Data Governance & Responsible AI Lead to establish and operationalize the governance foundation for the Baltimore Intelligence Center. This role is critical to ensuring the city’s data and AI ecosystem is governed with clear ownership, trusted metrics, operational controls, visible lineage, responsible AI practices, and production-ready governance processes. The successful candidate will lead governance implementation across the BIC program, working closely with city leadership, BCIT/security, legal stakeholders, platform engineering, data engineering, product teams, and agency data owners. This is a hands-on leadership role focused on operationalizing governance — not simply defining policy. The role will be responsible for establishing governance workflows, stewardship practices, AI governance processes, metadata standards, KPI governance routines, auditability controls, and governance reporting required to support production intelligence products and long-term city ownership.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in data governance, information governance, analytics governance, enterprise data management, or related leadership roles.
Proven experience operationalizing governance in complex, cross-functional environments.
Strong knowledge of data ownership and stewardship, metadata and lineage, governance operating models, data quality, auditability, and governance controls.
Experience working with cloud-based data and analytics platforms.
Ability to work effectively across technical teams, business stakeholders, legal/security partners, and executive leadership.
Strong facilitation, stakeholder management, communication, and documentation skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience in government, civic technology, public-sector, healthcare, infrastructure, transportation, or other regulated environments.
Experience with responsible AI governance, AI-enabled operational systems, or AI risk management practices.
Familiarity with metadata and catalog platforms such as OpenMetadata, Purview, Collibra, Alation, or similar technologies.
Working familiarity with governance and regulatory frameworks such as NIST, CJIS, HIPAA, SOC 2, or FedRAMP-related environments.
Experience supporting KPI governance, semantic governance, business glossary management, or enterprise reporting standards.

Responsibilities

Lead implementation and operationalization of the BIC governance framework across data, analytics, and AI products.
Establish governance workflows for data ownership, stewardship, approvals, escalation paths, and auditability.
Ensure governance processes are embedded into day-to-day delivery and operational decision-making.
Coordinate governance activities across city agencies, OPI leadership, and delivery teams.
Lead governance readiness processes for datasets entering the BIC platform.
Ensure priority datasets have named owners and stewards, approved access pathways, documented refresh cadences, lineage visibility, quality expectations, and operational governance controls prior to production use.
Partner with agency stakeholders and technical teams to resolve governance and operational readiness gaps.
Establish governance standards for metadata, lineage, business glossary, and catalog completeness.
Support operational governance of enterprise metadata capabilities and data catalog processes.
Ensure lineage and ownership are visible across source systems, platform layers, semantic assets, and intelligence products.
Partner with engineering teams to improve transparency, traceability, and trust in the city’s data ecosystem.
Lead governance processes for KPI definitions, semantic consistency, and business metric approval.
Ensure intelligence products use standardized and approved definitions across domains and agencies.
Partner with analytics, semantic-layer, and product teams to operationalize governance of business logic and reporting standards.
Ensure production KPIs are documented, reviewed, governed, and aligned to approved definitions.
Lead governance workflows for AI-enabled use cases and intelligence products.
Manage governance processes including use-case intake, risk tiering, privacy and security review coordination, human-in-the-loop controls, logging and traceability expectations, and post-launch governance monitoring.
Help ensure AI-enabled products are governed with appropriate transparency, oversight, and operational controls.
Establish governance reporting, operational scorecards, and governance review routines.
Partner with technical teams to define governance expectations for data quality, monitoring, and issue escalation.
Ensure governance processes support auditability, inspectability, and public-sector accountability requirements.
Support governance reviews for public-facing or operationally sensitive intelligence products.
Develop governance playbooks, templates, SOPs, and operational documentation.
Partner with OPI staff to transition governance capabilities into sustainable city operations.
Help establish long-term governance routines that can operate independently following the initial implementation period.