Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Information Director

🎯 Role Definition

The Information Director is a senior leader responsible for developing and operationalizing the organization's information strategy, ensuring high-quality, accessible, and compliant data and records across the enterprise. This role combines strategic leadership in data governance, information lifecycle management, metadata and taxonomy development, privacy and compliance oversight, and cross-functional stakeholder engagement to enable analytics, business operations, and risk mitigation. The Information Director partners with IT, legal, data science, business units and external vendors to design and deliver scalable information architecture, policies, and capabilities that drive measurable business value.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Information Manager / Head of Information Management
Director of Data Governance or Director of Records & Information Governance
Senior Records Manager / Head of Records Management
Senior Data Architect or Enterprise Architect with information governance remit

Advancement To:

Chief Data Officer (CDO)
Chief Information Officer (CIO)
VP of Data & Analytics
Head of Digital Transformation or Enterprise Information Strategy

Lateral Moves:

Data Privacy Officer / Chief Privacy Officer
Head of Knowledge Management
Enterprise Architecture Lead
Director, Content & Records Management

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead the creation, execution and continuous improvement of the enterprise information management strategy and roadmap, aligning metadata, master data, records management, data quality, and taxonomy initiatives to business priorities and measurable KPIs such as data quality scores, reduced information risk, and increased data reuse.
Establish, govern and chair the cross-functional Data Governance Council and associated stewardship community; define roles, responsibilities and decision rights for data owners, stewards and consumers across the organization to ensure consistent policy enforcement and accountability.
Design, document, and enforce enterprise-wide information policies, standards and procedures for metadata management, data classification, retention and disposition that satisfy regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, industry-specific rules) and internal risk controls.
Build and maintain the enterprise information architecture and metadata repository; drive implementation of metadata management, data catalogs, and lineage tools to improve discoverability, traceability and trust in data assets for analytics and operational use.
Sponsor and oversee master data management (MDM) programs to create single source(s) of truth for critical entities (customers, products, suppliers), coordinating cross-functional reconciliation, matching logic, and stewardship processes.
Define and measure data quality objectives, deploy data quality tooling and processes, prioritize remediation efforts, and institutionalize data quality SLA reporting to business leaders and analytics teams to reduce downstream rework and decision risk.
Own information risk management practices related to sensitive data, personally identifiable information (PII), and regulated records; partner with legal, privacy and security teams to apply appropriate controls, encryption, masking and access policies.
Lead large-scale information-driven transformation projects by translating business requirements into information architectures, data models and roadmaps that enable advanced analytics, automation, and AI initiatives.
Oversee the selection, procurement and vendor management of enterprise information management and data governance platforms (data catalogs, MDM, ECM, records management systems), driving vendor evaluations, contract negotiations, SLAs and implementation governance.
Create and manage the departmental budget for information management activities, prioritizing investments, tracking ROI, and ensuring cost-effective delivery of tooling, services and staffing.
Recruit, mentor and develop a multi-disciplinary information team including data stewards, metadata specialists, records managers, MDM engineers and business analysts; define career paths, performance metrics and training programs.
Develop and deliver organization-wide education, communication and change management programs to increase information literacy, promote governance adoption and embed stewardship behaviors into operational processes.
Partner with IT and cloud engineering to define secure, scalable information architecture patterns for on-premise and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), ensuring integration, performance and data lifecycle automation.
Create clear data access and provisioning models, working with analytics, BI and engineering teams to streamline safe data access for self-service analytics while enforcing least-privilege and auditability.
Define and operationalize records retention, disposition and legal hold processes, integrating them into ECM and records management systems to ensure defensible disposition and audit readiness.
Translate regulatory and compliance obligations into actionable controls and operational requirements; lead responses to data-related audits, investigations and regulatory inquiries.
Establish metrics and dashboards to report information program health (data quality, adoption, policy compliance, stewardship activity) to executive stakeholders and governance boards.
Drive cross-functional collaboration with business product owners to embed information requirements and governance checkpoints into product delivery lifecycles, minimizing rework and technical debt.
Lead incident response related to data breaches, unauthorized disclosures or data misuse from an information governance perspective and coordinate remediation and stakeholder communication.
Evaluate emerging technologies (knowledge graphs, semantic layers, data fabric, AI data stewardship tools) and recommend pilots that accelerate information maturity and business outcomes.
Advocate for and apply principles of ethical data use and responsible AI by defining acceptable-use frameworks, approval flows and monitoring mechanisms for advanced analytics and machine learning projects.
Coordinate global information policies across multiple jurisdictions and business units, tailoring taxonomy, retention and privacy controls to local regulatory and operational needs while maintaining centralized governance.
Define and manage SLAs for information services (cataloging, stewardship support, data provisioning), ensuring consistent service delivery and continuous improvement.

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 with preparation of governance artifacts for audits or executive reviews.
Provide subject-matter-expert input into procurement and solution design for analytics and content platforms.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Enterprise Data Governance and Policy Development: proven ability to create and operationalize governance frameworks, stewardship models, metadata standards and decision rights across complex organizations.
Metadata Management & Data Cataloging: experience implementing and driving adoption of data catalog and lineage tools to improve discoverability, provenance and data trust.
Master Data Management (MDM): hands-on knowledge of MDM patterns, matching and survivorship rules, and implementation considerations.
Data Quality Management: experience defining metrics, remediation workflows and using data quality tooling to improve completeness, accuracy and consistency.
Information Architecture & Modeling: strong understanding of conceptual, logical and physical data models and experience designing taxonomy, ontologies or knowledge graphs.
Records & Content Management: experience with ECM, records retention schedules, disposition workflows, and legal hold mechanisms.
Regulatory & Privacy Compliance: working knowledge of GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA (where applicable) and privacy impact assessments; ability to translate requirements into controls.
Cloud & Integration Platforms: familiarity with cloud data platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), ETL/ELT patterns, APIs and data lakehouse architectures.
Security & Access Controls: understanding of RBAC/ABAC, encryption, masking, and secure data provisioning mechanisms for analytics and operational environments.
BI & Analytics Enablers: knowledge of BI/analytics ecosystems, data provisioning, semantic layers and support for self-service analytics.
Vendor & Contract Management: experience managing third-party vendors for information, analytics and ECM platforms.
Project & Program Management: capability to run cross-functional transformation programs, track dependencies, budgets and deliverables.
Common Data Tools/Technologies (examples): Collibra/Alation/Atlan (catalogs), Informatica/IBM/Mulesoft (MDM/integration), Talend, AWS/Azure/GCP, SQL, Spark, and content management systems (SharePoint, OpenText).

Soft Skills

Strategic Leadership: ability to translate business strategy into prioritized information initiatives and measurable outcomes.
Stakeholder Management & Influence: strong experience building consensus with senior leaders, legal, privacy, IT and business units.
Communication & Storytelling: articulate complex information concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders and executive audiences.
Change Management: experience driving behavioral change and adoption for governance practices across diverse teams.
Problem Solving & Critical Thinking: pragmatic, data-driven decision making with a focus on root-cause remediation.
Coaching & People Development: coach, mentor and grow high-performing multidisciplinary teams.
Negotiation & Vendor Influence: negotiating contracts and influencing vendor roadmaps to meet enterprise needs.
Prioritization & Execution: ability to balance strategic initiatives with operational demands and deliver results.
Ethical Judgment: advocate for responsible data use and evaluate ethical implications of data programs.
Resilience & Adaptability: comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-changing technical and regulatory environments.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Library Science, Records Management, Business Administration or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (e.g., MSI, MSIS, MBA) or advanced certification in Information Management, Data Governance, Library/Information Science, or related disciplines.
Professional certifications such as Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP), Certified Information Professional (CIP), DAMA CDMP, or relevant vendor certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Information Science / Library Science
Data Science / Computer Science
Records & Information Management
Business Administration / Management Information Systems
Law (privacy/compliance focus)
Knowledge Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

8–15+ years in information management, data governance, records management or related domains, with progressive leadership responsibilities.

Preferred:

10–15+ years with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role overseeing enterprise information programs in a complex, regulated or multi-national organization.
Demonstrated track record delivering information governance programs, MDM or metadata initiatives, and leading cross-functional teams to measurable outcomes.