Associate Director, Data Semantic Governance

Allergan; Irvine (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid time off

Medical/dental/vision insurance

401(k)

Job summary

AbbVie seeks an Associate Director, Data Semantic Governance to shape how data is governed and leveraged across the enterprise. You’ll bridge business strategy with IT, driving semantic architecture, metadata, and data quality.

You will lead governance standards, collaborate with Data Strategy and BTS, and influence executives to align data capabilities with commercial goals while enabling AI-enabled insights.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in information systems, business analytics, CS, or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in data governance, business data architecture, or data management.
• Deep expertise with data governance and cataloging platforms (Alation, Collibra) and MDM platforms (Reltio, Informatica).
• Advanced knowledge of data modeling, glossaries, data lineage, semantic layer design.
• Strong SQL proficiency for data profiling and quality assessment.
• Experience with cloud data ecosystems (Snowflake, AWS, Azure).
• Prior pharma/life sciences experience preferred.
• Excellent communication and ability to translate technical concepts to business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Shape the strategic direction for data governance across the organization.
• Own governance standards and decision framework for semantic data landscape.
• Design semantic layer, ontology mappings, and business glossary standardization.
• Promote standardized templates for AI agents and enterprise governance frameworks.
• Drive data quality rules, lineage, and end-to-end data health monitoring.
• Represent data governance in executive forums and governance councils.

Skills

Data governance

Semantic layer design

Executive communication

Business analytics

Stakeholder alignment

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in information systems / analytics

Tools

Alation

Collibra

MDM platforms (Reltio, Informatica)

Job description

Company Description

About AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Job Description

The Associate Director, Data Semantic Governance will shape the strategic direction for how business data is governed and leveraged across the organization, ensuring a trusted, scalable, and AI-ready enterprise foundation. This individual serves as the bridge between business stakeholders, data operations teams (for Commercial and APS), data strategy and BI teams, as well as our BTS (IT) partners.

The candidate will own the governance standards and decision framework for AbbVie’s semantic and logical data landscape that ensures data is consistent, interoperable, compliant, and aligned to enterprise priorities. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in data governance, semantic architecture, metadata, master data management, and data quality, along with executive presence and the ability to influence and drive alignment across the organization

Responsibilities:

Strategic Alignment & Semantic Governance

Partner with Data Strategy, Analytics, and BTS (IT) teams to design a Semantic Governance process. Collaborate with BTS to define and approve semantic layer design, ontology mappings, standardize business glossary/terminology, canonical data models, metric definitions, dimensions and hierarchies, entity resolution and master data, data stewardship, metadata, data quality and lineage, search and discovery capabilities “Way of asking AI glossary”, access and governance rules, and consumption interfaces. Use usage patterns, feedback, and issue trends to improve semantic models.

Develop and implement standardized templates for AI agents to promote consistency, scalability, and ease of use. Establish and evolve enterprise data governance frameworks. Serve as the governance liaison between APEX business teams and BTS to align execution with commercial strategy, enterprise transformation goals, privacy & compliance, and AI enablement.

Execution, Data Quality & Optimization

Define and operationalize business-driven data quality rules, anomaly detection, and monitoring protocols to strengthen trust in enterprise data. Partner with data stewards and IT teams to ensure data assets are cataloged, sensitivity-classified, and tagged with end-to-end lineage. Review data health score for completeness, consistency, accuracy, timeliness, and usability. Support quality scorecards, controls, and periodic governance reviews. Drive compliance-by-design across the enterprise data ecosystem and support proof-of-concepts for emerging semantic, metadata, and data governance technologies.

Enterprise Influence & Strategic Enablement

Influence senior stakeholders by clearly articulating how data governance and business architecture drive enterprise value. Represent the data governance function in executive forums, governance councils, and strategic working groups, while fostering cross-functional alignment around shared standards, stewardship expectations, and future‑state data capabilities. Provide strategic oversight into initiatives, partners, and vendors supporting enterprise data governance priorities, and support investment decisions by connecting governance capabilities to enterprise outcomes and long‑term value creation.

Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree or master’s degree in information systems, Business Analytics, Computer Science, or a related field is required.
• 7+ years of progressive experience in data governance, business data architecture, or data management, acting as the bridge between business strategy and IT execution.
• Deep expertise with data governance and cataloging platforms (e.g., Alation, Collibra) and Master Data Management (MDM) platforms (e.g., Reltio, Informatica).
• Advanced knowledge of conceptual and logical data modeling, business glossaries, data lineage, and semantic layer design.
• Strong proficiency in SQL for data profiling, querying, and quality assessment.
• Solid understanding of cloud data ecosystems (Snowflake, AWS, Azure) to effectively partner with and guide BTS engineering teams.
• Proven ability to author enterprise data standards and drive adherence across diverse business units and analytics users.
• Prior experience in the Pharma/Life Sciences industry is highly preferred.
• Excellent communication and technical translation skills; able to distill complex architectural concepts into clear business value for non-technical stakeholders.

Additional Information

• The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Companybelieves ingood faith it will pay for this role at the timeof this posting based on the job grade for this position.Individualcompensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, andwemayultimatelypaymore or less than the posted range. This range may bemodifiedin thefuture.
• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick),medical/dental/visioninsurance and 401(k) to eligibleemployees.
• This job is eligible toparticipatein our long-term incentiveprograms.

Note: No amount of payis considered to bewages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, anddeterminable.The amount and availability of any bonus,commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form ofcompensation and benefitsthat are allocable to a particular employeeremainsin the Company's sole andabsolutediscretion unless and until paid andmay bemodifiedat the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent withapplicable law.

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.

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