Director, Data Governance

avalara; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonuses

Private medical insurance

Paid time off

Disability insurance

Job summary

Avalara seeks a Director of Data Governance to own governance for enterprise data, metrics, and platforms. This founding role will establish policies, controls, and practices, partnering with Internal Audit and IT to ensure accuracy and compliance.

The role sits within the Global Analytics & Insights organization and emphasizes a hands-on, player-coach approach in year one. You will shape the operating model, drive classification, access controls, and data stewardship across key domains, with a

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data management, data governance, analytics, or related field.
• Demonstrated leadership, building programs and teams from scratch a strong plus.
• Deep expertise in data governance fundamentals: access controls, classification, lineage, metadata management.
• Experience with finance data processes and reporting; understands governance of financial data.
• Ability to read and review SQL for alignment with business purpose.
• Strong understanding of data security and privacy requirements and controls.
• Proven ability to drive adoption of governance practices without formal authority.
• Experience creating governance policies, data stewardship models, and process frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Data Governance function within GAI—define operating model, quality bar, and strategy for data assets.
• Own information access governance, classification, and stewardship across enterprise data assets.
• Partner with Legal, IT, and Privacy to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements (SOC 2).
• Build a data catalog and metadata management capability; ensure discoverability and trust in data products.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering and Analytics Engineering to integrate governance into pipelines and models.

Skills

Data governance

SQL proficiency

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Cloud data warehouse

Data security & privacy

Tools

Snowflake

dbt

Alation

Collibra

DataHub

Job description

What You'll Do

Director, Data Governance

Reports to: Senior Director, Data & Analytics Engineering

About the Role

The Director, Data Governance, in the Global Analytics & Insights (GAI) organization, owns the governance function for Avalara’s enterprise data, metrics, and platforms - establishing the policies, controls, and practices that make GAI’s data trusted, secure, and fully compliant. This is a founding role for this function: you'll take over the current processes, identify areas for improvement, gaps, and other opportunities, define a roadmap and scale into a full practice as the function matures. You’ll sit inside the GAI Data & Analytics Engineering organization and operate as a player-coach in the near term. You’ll be hands on with real governance work, tooling, and institutional muscle, partnering with Internal Audit and Information Technology to ensure the systems are complete and accurate. The first year mandate: get access controls right, ensure data classification and processes are aligned to Avalara’s enterprise standards, and establish the compliance posture that Avalara’s enterprise data requires.

#LI-remote

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

Key Responsibilities

Function Leadership

• Assess the current state of data governance processes, tooling, and practices within GAI — identify gaps, risks, and opportunities, and develop a prioritized roadmap to address them

• Own and evolve the Data Governance function within GAI — setting the operating model, quality bar, and strategic direction for how GAI's data assets are classified, accessed, and stewarded

• Review all processes, systems, and protocol for work related to critical data, partnering with engineering to ensure processes evolve to meet the highest standards

• Establish clear data ownership and stewardship assignments across GAI's key domains; define who is accountable and who is responsible for each data asset

• Operate as a player-coach in the near term — executing hands-on governance work while laying the foundation for a scaled team; recruit and develop governance talent as headcount grows

Data Access Governance & Classification

• Maintain and mature the existing role-based access governance model for GAI — including access controls, request/review processes, periodic access reviews, and data sensitivity audits across Snowflake and GAI's data platforms

• Lead the classification of GAI's data assets against Avalara's enterprise taxonomy (Public, Internal Use, Sensitive, Restricted); drive remediation of unclassified or misclassified data

• Partner with Legal, IT, and Privacy to ensure GAI's data handling practices comply with applicable regulatory and contractual requirements, including SOC 2

• Ensure our enterprise data is prepared for AI use- with the right security, classification, intent, and protection

Data Quality & Metadata Management

• Build and maintain a data quality framework for GAI — quality dimensions, monitoring, alerting, and remediation processes; apply particular rigor to financial metrics and reporting data given their sensitivity and downstream impact

• Review SQL models and pipeline logic to verify that implementation aligns with documented business purpose — identifying definitional drift, undocumented transformations, or logic that has diverged from stated intent

• Champion development of a data catalog and metadata management capability within GAI; ensure pipelines, models, and data products are discoverable, documented, and trusted

• Establish data lineage practices that provide visibility into how data flows through GAI systems and where it is consumed downstream

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as GAI's primary liaison to Avalara's enterprise governance, security, privacy, and AI CoE teams — ensuring GAI practices align with company-wide frameworks

• Partner with Internal Audit and Information Technology on compliance reviews, control assessments, and system-level accuracy — ensuring GAI's data systems meet enterprise audit standards

• Engage executives and cross-functional leaders on data risk, compliance posture, and governance maturity; influence adoption without formal authority over partner functions

• Partner with Data Engineering and Analytics Engineering to ensure governance requirements are built into pipelines and semantic models, not bolted on afterward

What You’ll Need To Be Successful

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of experience in data management, data engineering, analytics, or a closely related field; ideally in a SaaS or technology business at scale

• Demonstrated leadership experience, including leading teams, programs, and cross-functional initiatives; track record of building programs and teams from scratch a strong plus

• Deep expertise in data governance fundamentals — data access controls, classification, data quality management, lineage, and metadata management

• Experience working in or alongside finance organizations — financial reporting, analytics, or financial data processes — with a strong understanding of how financial data is produced, consumed, and governed

• Ability to read and review SQL code to assess whether the logic aligns with its documented business purpose — identifying definitional drift, undocumented transformations, or implementation that has diverged from stated intent

• Strong understanding of data security and privacy compliance requirements and how they translate to technical and operational controls

• Proven ability to drive adoption without formal authority — able to influence engineering teams, business stakeholders, and executive audiences simultaneously

• Experience building governance policies, data stewardship models, and process frameworks, not just inheriting them

Technical Skills

• Hands-on experience with Snowflake or an equivalent cloud data warehouse

• Familiarity with dbt or similar pipeline/transformation tooling — enough to partner effectively with Data Engineering, not to build pipelines directly

• Experience with data catalog or metadata management platforms (e.g., Alation, Collibra, DataHub, or similar)

• Experience with role-based access controls in cloud data environments, including conducting periodic access reviews, data sensitivity assessments, and compliance audits

Avalara is an AI-first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We’ll Take Care Of You

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.

Inclusive culture and diversit y
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.