General Purpose
University of the People is seeking a hands-on Data Governance Lead to build and personally run an enterprise-wide data governance program that makes our data trusted, well documented, and compliant. This is a builder and operator role. The successful candidate will work independently with minimal direction, write policy themselves, query data directly to investigate issues, drive the resolution of data quality problems that originate across many university systems, and present outcomes credibly to executive leadership.
Acting as the bridge between business and technology, the Data Governance Lead will stand up our data catalog, improve data dictionary, and business glossary, establish clear ownership and accountability, and demonstrate the value of governance through measurable improvements. This person will be the single point of accountability for the university's Trusted Data Program aimed at improving data quality.
Essential Functions and Responsibilities
Work independently and own outcomes. Operate as the self-directed owner of the governance program, setting priorities, driving initiatives to completion, and holding others accountable across the university without relying on day-to-day direction. This role carries the program, it does not simply coordinate it.
Design a Governance Framework. Create the data governance framework that defines data ownership models, steward roles, and escalation paths across business, operational, and technology units, establishing clear accountability for data assets, a structured issue resolution process, and definition sign-off.
Resolve data quality issues at the source. Create andlead the end-to-end process for detecting, triaging, investigating, and permanently resolving data quality issues that originate in source systems, integrations, business rules, and manual data entry. Personally investigate issues by querying data, trace root causes, assign remediation to the accountable teams, and confirm that fixes hold. Establish a closed-loop remediation process with clear severity, ownership, and prevention.
Query and investigate data directly. Write SQL to profile data, quantify the scope of an issue, validate fixes, and build data quality checks, without depending on the analytics or engineering teams to do this investigative work. Comfort working directly in BigQuery and reading across CRM, LMS, and warehouse data is essential, not optional.
Author governance policies and standards. Personally write clear, practical policies, standards, and procedures, including AI tool usage, data quality, data classification, retention, and access standards, that a non-technical audience can follow and that meet regulatory requirements. Policy authorship is a core duty of this role, not a task to delegate.
Ensure compliance and protect sensitive data. Ensure the university meets its regulatory obligations, including GDPR, FERPA, and PII protection. Run regular data quality audits, apply and maintain data classification, and partner with legal, security, and business teams so that risks are mitigated and data is managed responsibly.
Build and run the catalog, dictionary, and glossary. Stand up and manage the enterprise data catalog and metadata tooling (Google Cloud Dataplex, Microsoft Purview), build and maintain the data dictionary and business glossary, and drive their adoption so that terms, definitions, and metrics are consistent across the university. This requires prior, hands-on experience rolling out these exact capabilities, not just governing them in the abstract.
Chair the Data Governance Committee. Lead, and facilitate the Data Governance Committee, setting agendas, driving decisions on priority and urgency, resolving ownership disputes, and reinforcing accountability across business and technical stakeholders.
Present value to executives. Define KPIs, create a data quality dashboard and a reporting cadence that demonstrate the value governance delivers and present these outcomes directly to executive leadership in clear, persuasive terms. This role routinely communicates with and presents to senior executives, so the ability to translate technical work into executive language and hold the room is a requirement of the job.
Required Qualifications
- Works independently: a demonstrated track record of building a governance or data quality program largely single-handedly, owning it end to end with minimal supervision.
- Hands-on SQL and cloud data skills: able to write SQL to profile and investigate data independently, with working experience on a cloud data platform (Microsoft Dynamics 365, Google BigQuery preferred).
- Policy authorship: proven experience personally writing data governance policies, standards, and procedures that were adopted in a real organization.
- Catalog, dictionary, and glossary rollout: prior hands-on experience deploying and driving adoption of a data catalog, a data dictionary, and a business glossary
- Data quality issue resolution: demonstrated success resolving data quality issues across a complex, multi-system environment, including root cause analysis and prevention.
- Executive communication: proven ability to present to and influence senior executives, with strong written and verbal communication and skilled facilitation of cross-functional groups.
- Experience: 10 or more years in data governance, data management, or enterprise information management, including experience operationalizing governance in a complex organization.
- Education: Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Data Management, Computer Science, Business, or a related field. Master's preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Certifications in data governance (DCAM, DAMA and DMBOK), privacy and compliance (CIPP, CIPM), or cloud data platforms.
- Experience in higher education or another regulated, student or customer data environment.
- Familiarity with Dynamics 365, Brightspace, Marketo, and Power BI, the core systems in our data landscape.
Pay: ₹4,000,000.00 - ₹4,700,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: Remote
