Chief AI Governance & Risk Officer

Synchrony; Stamford (CT); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 330,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual incentive plan

Equity

Flexible work options

Job summary

Synchrony seeks an SVP Head of AI Governance to scale responsible AI across the enterprise. You will design, implement, and operate the AI governance function, establish durable controls, and translate policy and risk framework requirements into practical governance programs.

In this role you will partner with second-line and third-line risk, compliance, legal, technology risk, model risk management, supplier management, privacy, information security, and other control partners to strengthen AI

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline and 10+ years of experience in risk management, technology governance, AI governance, data governance, compliance, audit, controls, regulatory readiness, technology delivery, or strategic program leadership; in lieu of a degree, 12+ years of relevant experience.
• Proven experience leading governance, risk, control, compliance, or oversight programs in a complex enterprise environment.
• Strong understanding of AI, generative AI, agentic AI, machine learning, automation, data, technology platforms, and responsible AI concepts sufficient to lead governance across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead Synchrony’s enterprise AI Governance function within the AI Office, including the operating model, governance routines, standards, controls, reporting, and oversight activities needed to scale AI responsibly.
• Help drive the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of Synchrony’s AI governance framework in alignment with enterprise risk management expectations, AI policy and standards, regulatory requirements, and industry practices.
• Partner closely with second-line risk, compliance, legal, technology risk, model risk management, supplier management, privacy, information security, and other control partners to strengthen AI risk management processes and ensure clear ownership across the lines of defense.
• Partner with third-line Internal Audit and other assurance stakeholders to prepare for ongoing monitoring, reviews, audits, evidence requests, issue management, and validation of AI governance processes and controls.
• Define and execute the strategy for key AI governance topics, including AI intake, use case registration, risk tiering, inventory management, approval workflows, lifecycle gates, control validation, monitoring, recertification, and exception management.
• Lead the development of new AI controls and control enhancements, ensuring requirements are practical, risk-based, measurable, auditable, and embedded into delivery processes wherever possible.
• Translate AI policy, standards, and regulatory expectations into actionable procedures, job aids, playbooks, control requirements, decision frameworks, and governance artifacts for use by technology teams, business owners, and control partners.
• Maintain a disciplined enterprise view of AI use cases, tools, agents, models, patterns, approvals, risk ratings, ownership, lifecycle status, control evidence, and governance outcomes.
• Prepare for regulatory activities, executive oversight, audits, and risk reviews by developing high-quality materials, evidence packages, issue responses, remediation plans, and executive-ready updates.
• Responsible for leading direct 1LoD risk management and governance interaction with regulators.
• Lead governance reporting for the Chief AI Officer and senior stakeholders, clearly articulating portfolio status, risk themes, control maturity, regulatory readiness, open issues, dependencies, decisions needed, and progress against governance priorities.
• Work closely with AI engineering, architecture, security, cloud, data, and platform teams to ensure technical governance capabilities such as registries, gateways, policy enforcement, logging, monitoring, evaluation, guardrails, and evidence generation are delivered on track.
• Partner with program management to ensure governance initiatives are planned, prioritized, resourced, sequenced, tracked, and executed with clear milestones, dependencies, owners, risks, and escalation paths.

Skills

Governance leadership

AI risk management

Stakeholder management

Executive communication

Policy to procedure translation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in related discipline

Tools

GRC platforms

Power BI

Jira

ServiceNow

Job description

Synchrony seeks an SVP Head of AI Governance to scale responsible AI across the enterprise. You will design, implement, and operate the AI governance function, establish durable controls, and translate policy and risk framework requirements into practical governance programs.

In this role you will partner with second-line and third-line risk, compliance, legal, technology risk, model risk management, supplier management, privacy, information security, and other control partners to strengthen AI