Director, Data Governance, Quality and Enablement

Scorpion Therapeutics; Waltham (MA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Base pay + bonus

Equity

Flexible PTO

Medical/dental/vision

Life/disability insurance

401(k) match

Job summary

Scorpion Therapeutics seeks a strategic Data Governance leader to drive a multi-year roadmap, aligning governance with enterprise strategy and regulatory expectations. You will own the standards for data quality, lineage, metadata, and catalog across the data platform and partner with security, privacy, and IT compliance teams.

Experience in pharma/biotech data environments and SOX controls is highly valued, with a track record of embedding controls and enabling governed self-service for

Qualifications

• 10+ years in data governance/quality with 5+ years in leadership.
• Experience operationalizing enterprise governance frameworks (ownership, stewardship, policies, standards).
• Strong knowledge of data quality, metadata, cataloging, lineage, data products, and controls.
• Familiarity with governance frameworks (DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM, NIST) and scalable practices.
• SOX/financial reporting controls experience; auditability and evidence handling.
• Pharma/biotech/life sciences experience preferred; data integrity knowledge desirable.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the IT data governance roadmap aligned to enterprise strategy.
• Establish technical governance standards across the data platform.
• Implement scalable governance capabilities for data classification, ownership, metadata, lineage, quality, access, and lifecycle management.
• Operationalize Data Owner and Data Steward responsibilities.
• Embed governance and quality into data pipelines and data products.
• Lead metadata, catalog, and lineage implementation; establish metadata standards.

Skills

Data governance

Leadership

Data quality

Metadata management

Data lineage

Data catalog

Cloud governance

SOX/compliance

Pharma/biotech

Security/privacy

Agile

Tools

Alation

Microsoft Purview

Collibra

Informatica

Power BI

Azure

Microsoft Fabric

Job description

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the IT data governance roadmap aligned to enterprise strategy and business priorities.
• Establish technical governance standards and controls across the enterprise data platform.
• Implement scalable governance capabilities for data classification, ownership, metadata, lineage, quality, access, and lifecycle management.
• Operationalize Data Owner and Data Steward responsibilities.
• Embed governance and quality directly into data pipelines and data products.
• Translate enterprise policies/regulatory requirements/business expectations into practical technology standards and controls.
• Establish the enterprise technology framework for data quality and data observability.
• Define reusable patterns for profiling, validation, monitoring, reconciliation, and exception management.
• Embed automated quality controls into pipelines; implement quality gates across ingestion, transformation, and publication.
• Implement monitoring/scorecards for critical data products and Critical Data Elements; drive root-cause analysis and remediation.
• Lead metadata, catalog, and lineage implementation; establish metadata standards across systems and data products.
• Enable automated lineage from source to consumption.
• Establish standards for certified enterprise data products (ownership, metadata, lineage, quality, security classification, documentation, SLAs, lifecycle).
• Enable governed self-service (standards, templates, playbooks, documentation, communities of practice).
• Partner to implement compliance/technology controls (classification, access, retention, auditability, evidence for audits; scalable controls).
• Establish an AI-ready data foundation (quality, metadata, lineage, ownership, security, business context; governed access for AI).

Leadership Expectations

• Own the multi-year Data Governance, Quality & Enablement roadmap; mature governance capability.
• Lead employees/partners/vendors; drive automation of controls; set KPIs; communicate data trust/risk/maturity; balance speed, scalability, compliance, and control.

Required & Desired Qualifications

• 10+ years progressive experience (data governance/management/quality), including 5+ years leadership building/scaling enterprise data governance.
• Experience operationalizing enterprise/federated governance frameworks (ownership, stewardship, policies, standards, decision rights, operating model).
• Strong knowledge of data quality, metadata management, cataloging, lineage, data classification, data products, semantic models; embedding controls into modern platforms.
• Knowledge of governance/control frameworks (e.g., DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM, NIST) and translating into scalable practices.
• Experience with SOX/financial reporting controls; understanding lineage, access controls, change management, integrity, auditability, evidence.
• Highly regulated pharma/biotech/life sciences experience preferred; GxP and data integrity knowledge highly desirable.
• Understanding privacy/security/retention/data protection; experience partnering with security, privacy, IT compliance, internal audit, finance.
• 5+ years administering enterprise data catalog/governance platforms (Alation or comparable: Microsoft Purview, Collibra, Informatica).
• Cloud/data governance/analytics tech experience (Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Purview, Alation, Power BI, Azure preferred).
• Agile experience with JIRA/Confluence.

Benefits

• Full-time employees are eligible for base pay, bonus, equity, flexible paid time off, medical/dental/vision, life/disability insurance, and 401(k) (traditional/Roth/match), plus additional voluntary benefits and Employee Assistance Program mental health benefits.