Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Data Governance Manager

🎯 Role Definition

The Data Governance Manager leads the design, implementation, and operationalization of enterprise data governance programs that ensure data quality, regulatory compliance, and trusted data for analytics and business decision-making. This role partners with business stakeholders, IT, security, legal and data engineering to define policies, steward data assets, enable metadata management, and drive adoption of data governance tools and operating models across the organization.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Data Steward or Senior Data Steward
Data Analyst / Senior Data Analyst
Compliance, Risk, or Privacy Analyst

Advancement To:

Director of Data Governance
Head of Data Management or Master Data Management (MDM)
Chief Data Officer (CDO)

Lateral Moves:

Data Privacy / Compliance Manager
Data Quality Manager
Enterprise Data Architect

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop, document and maintain a scalable enterprise data governance framework and operating model that include policies, standards, roles (data owners, stewards), processes, escalation paths and performance metrics to ensure consistent data management across business units.
Lead the creation and enforcement of data policies and standards for data quality, metadata, master data, data lineage, data retention, data classification and acceptable use, ensuring alignment with legal, regulatory (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) and internal compliance requirements.
Build and run a data stewardship program that recruits, trains and mentors business data stewards and data owners, defines stewardship responsibilities, and tracks stewardship activities and outcomes to improve data ownership and accountability.
Drive implementation and adoption of data governance technologies such as data catalogs, metadata management tools, data lineage solutions, and master data management (MDM) platforms (examples: Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Talend), working with IT and vendors to define requirements, pilots and rollouts.
Define and measure key data governance KPIs and metrics (data quality scores, steward engagement, policy compliance, time-to-resolution for data issues) and produce executive dashboards and reports that demonstrate ROI and program maturity progress.
Design and execute data quality frameworks and processes, including data profiling, root-cause analysis, issue management, remediation plans and governance-driven quality gates for critical data domains used in reporting and decision-making.
Collaborate with legal, privacy and security teams to operationalize data privacy and protection controls, including classification, access controls, data masking, data subject access request (DSAR) workflows, and retention schedules.
Lead data risk assessments, business impact analyses and privacy impact assessments for high-risk data assets or new data initiatives; recommend mitigation strategies and track remediation progress.
Establish data onboarding and offboarding procedures for systems, vendors and new data sources to ensure compliance with governance standards, metadata capture and integration into the data catalog.
Work closely with data engineering, BI and analytics teams to embed governance requirements into data pipelines, CI/CD processes, data models and analytical workflows to ensure governed, trusted data is available for self-service analytics.
Facilitate cross-functional working groups, governance councils and executive steering committees to prioritize data initiatives, resolve escalations, gain alignment on policies and accelerate governance adoption across departments.
Define and maintain enterprise data definitions, business glossaries and data dictionaries; enforce canonical definitions for critical business terms to remove ambiguity from analytics and reporting.
Create and deliver training, communications and change management programs to drive cultural adoption of data governance practices, including onboarding materials, playbooks, workshops and e-learning content for business and technical audiences.
Oversee data classification and inventory programs that catalog data assets, map data flows and create data lineage documentation to support audits, compliance reporting and incident response activities.
Manage vendor relationships, contract requirements and service-level commitments for data governance and data quality tools; participate in vendor selection, proof-of-concept evaluations and contract negotiations.
Coordinate and participate in internal and external audits related to data governance, data privacy and information security; provide evidence, artifacts and remediation plans to auditors and regulators.
Drive continuous improvement of governance processes through regular maturity assessments, benchmarking against best practices (e.g., DCAM), and incorporation of automation and tooling to improve scale and efficiency.
Define role-based access controls and data access request workflows, approving or advising on access for sensitive or regulated data and ensuring appropriate approvals and justifications are captured.
Partner with product and program delivery teams to embed governance checkpoints into project lifecycles, including pre-production validation, data validation plans and go/no-go governance approvals.
Lead incident response for data governance-related issues (data breaches, misclassification, incorrect data usage), coordinate investigations, root-cause analysis, stakeholder communication and implementation of corrective controls.
Drive the integration of data governance practices into cloud data platforms and modern data stacks (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, AWS/GCP/Azure data services), ensuring governance controls are applied consistently in cloud-native environments.
Prepare and present monthly/quarterly governance performance and risk reports to senior leaders and the board, highlighting program wins, risks, remediation status and next steps to mature the data governance program.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Assist in defining prioritized backlog items for governance-related improvements and automation.
Provide subject matter expertise for cross-functional data projects, pilots and proof-of-concepts.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Data governance frameworks and best practices: policy design, stewardship models, operating models and maturity assessment.
Data cataloging and metadata management (hands-on experience with tools such as Collibra, Alation, Informatica EDC, Microsoft Purview).
Data quality management: profiling, cleansing, root cause analysis, business rules and automated data quality monitoring.
Master data management (MDM) concepts and implementation experience (entity resolution, golden record, matching rules).
Familiarity with data privacy and protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, HIPAA) and operationalizing compliance controls.
Knowledge of data lineage and impact analysis tools and techniques to document data flows and dependencies.
Basic to intermediate SQL for data profiling and validation; familiarity with Python, R or ETL tools is a plus.
Experience with cloud data platforms and modern data stacks (Snowflake, Databricks, AWS/GCP/Azure) and integrating governance in cloud environments.
Experience implementing role-based access control (RBAC), data masking, anonymization and secure data-sharing patterns.
Hands-on experience with data catalog ingestion, metadata harvesting, API integrations and automation of governance workflows.
Project management and program delivery skills: ability to manage cross-functional projects, timelines, budgets and vendor implementations.
Familiarity with auditing processes, evidence collection and delivering artifacts for internal and external compliance reviews.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management: ability to influence senior leaders, drive consensus and operate effectively across business and technical teams.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills for policy writing, training materials, executive reporting and presentations.
Strategic thinking with a pragmatic, delivery-oriented mindset: translate high-level governance strategy into executable tasks and measurable outcomes.
Problem-solving and analytical mindset with attention to detail when evaluating data issues and remediation plans.
Change management and training facilitation skills to drive adoption of governance processes and cultural change.
Negotiation and vendor management skills to manage third-party software and services.
Leadership and mentorship skills to build and grow a community of data stewards and governance practitioners.
Ability to manage ambiguity and prioritize competing demands in a fast-paced, evolving data environment.
Customer service orientation: partnering with business users to understand domain needs while enforcing governance standards.
Ethical judgment and confidentiality when handling sensitive and regulated data.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Business Administration, Information Management, Law, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (MSc, MS, MBA) in Data Science, Information Management, Business Analytics, Computer Science or related discipline.
Professional certifications such as CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional), CIPP (Certified Information Privacy Professional), CISM, CISSP, or vendor-specific certifications for Collibra/Alation/Informatica.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / Information Management
Data Science / Analytics
Business Administration / Operations
Law or Regulatory Compliance (for privacy-focused roles)
Statistics / Applied Mathematics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–8 years of progressive experience in data governance, data management, analytics or related disciplines, including 2–4 years in a governance leadership role.

Preferred: 7+ years of relevant experience with demonstrable success building and running data governance programs at scale, implementing data catalog or MDM tooling, and managing cross-functional stakeholder relationships. Experience in heavily regulated industries (finance, healthcare, insurance, telecommunications) is a strong plus.