Director, Data Management & Governance

liveoakbancshares; Wilmington (NC); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Live Oak Bank in Wilmington, NC seeks a Director of Data Management & Governance to lead data quality, governance, and stewardship programs, reporting to the Chief Data & Analytics Officer. This hands-on leader will work with business leaders to embed data practices into daily processes, prepare data foundations for AI, and scale the program as the bank grows.

The role emphasizes collaboration across security, risk, compliance, and regulators, with an opportunity to shape how data fuels business

Qualifications

• 8+ years in data management, data quality, data governance, or related, including 3+ years leading team.

Responsibilities

• Lead Live Oak's data quality program - expanding monitoring coverage, driving down open exceptions, and building trust in the data across teams.
• Own metadata management in the data platform, including the business glossary, classification, and lineage that make data findable and understandable.
• Advance the semantic layer, helping business and technical teams speak a common language about the data.
• Prepare the bank's data foundations for AI and agentic consumption - ensuring quality, semantic clarity, and metadata are robust enough to support how these systems will increasingly work with our data.
• Own Live Oak's relationship with Monte Carlo, our data quality monitoring platform.
• Lead the Data Stewardship program - supporting stewards across business domains, running its operating rhythm, and growing the community as the program expands.
• Partner with stewards to embed data quality checks and rules into their daily work, so DQ becomes an operational practice rather than a separate monitoring exercise.
• Use the Stewardship community as a two-way channel - bringing business context into data decisions, and bringing data awareness into business teams.
• Continue maturing Live Oak's data governance program - evolving policies, standards, and processes as the bank grows and as regulatory expectations shift.
• Serve as the data governance voice on the bank-wide vendor management program, participating regularly in vendor reviews and third-party risk processes where data is involved.
• Partner with Information Security, Compliance, Risk, Internal Audit, and - when relevant - external regulators.
• Lead, coach, and develop the data management, data quality, and data governance team, and shape how it grows as the program expands.

Job description

About Us

Live Oak Bank is a digital bank that serves small business owners across the country. Our groundbreaking spin on service and technology has fueled our mission to be America's Small Business Bank. Our products help customers buy, build, and expand their business, and our high-yield savings and CD products help them grow their hard-earned money. At Live Oak, we never lose sight of the well-being of our people. We believe our employees are the heart of our company. Our commitment to our customers and culture is intertwined, and we seek those who embody and embrace what it takes to empower the American dream.

How This Role Impacts Live Oak and its People

Data is a strategic asset at Live Oak, and how well we manage it shapes what the bank can do - from how quickly analytics teams can deliver, to how confidently the business acts on what data tells them, to how well we serve our customers. The Director, Data Management & Governance leads that work. Reporting to the Chief Data & Analytics Officer, this role owns Live Oak's data management, data quality, data governance, and data stewardship programs.

Over the past several years the team has built strong foundations and taken the bank from an early-stage capability to a functioning, growing program. The next chapter is about continuing to mature these areas and getting them meaningfully integrated into how the bank runs day‑to‑day - so data quality lives inside business processes, semantic clarity lives inside how teams talk about their work, and governance shows up as enablement more than oversight. It's also about readying our data - quality, semantic clarity, metadata, models - for the AI and agentic systems that will increasingly consume it.

This role sits at the intersection of data, business, and enablement . It's a good fit for someone who wants to lead a real, working program in a bank that treats data as a strategic advantage. It's a genuine player-coach role - the Director works alongside a small team and stays close to the data, close to the business, and directly shapes outcomes rather than sitting a step removed from them. There is room to grow the team as the program continues to expand.

Location: Candidates must be based at our headquarters in Wilmington, NC, or reside within reasonable driving distance, including the Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, NC, Virginia, or South Carolina markets.

What You'll Do at Live Oak

Business Partnership & Strategic Engagement

• Build deep relationships with business leaders - understanding their strategy, their goals, how they use data today, and where their pain points and growth opportunities are
• Stay close to where the business is heading, and shape a data management agenda that supports the bank's strategic direction
• Work directly with the business to resolve complex data issues and identify where processes should evolve to improve data quality at the source
• Partner with the CDAO and the rest of D&A leadership to prioritize where the team invests

Data Management: Quality, Metadata & Semantic Layer

• Lead Live Oak's data quality program - expanding monitoring coverage, driving down open exceptions, and building trust in the data across teams
• Own metadata management in the data platform, including the business glossary, classification, and lineage that make data findable and understandable
• Advance the semantic layer, helping business and technical teams speak a common language about the data
• Prepare the bank's data foundations for AI and agentic consumption - ensuring quality, semantic clarity, and metadata are robust enough to support how these systems will increasingly work with our data
• Own Live Oak's relationship with Monte Carlo, our data quality monitoring platform

Data Stewardship & Operational Integration

• Lead the Data Stewardship program - supporting stewards across business domains, running its operating rhythm, and growing the community as the program expands
• Partner with stewards to embed data quality checks and rules into their daily work, so DQ becomes an operational practice rather than a separate monitoring exercise
• Use the Stewardship community as a two-way channel - bringing business context into data decisions, and bringing data awareness into business teams

Governance, Risk & Team Leadership

• Continue maturing Live Oak's data governance program - evolving policies, standards, and processes as the bank grows and as regulatory expectations shift
• Serve as the data governance voice on the bank-wide vendor management program, participating regularly in vendor reviews and third-party risk processes where data is involved
• Partner with Information Security, Compliance, Risk, Internal Audit, and - when relevant - external regulators
• Lead, coach, and develop the data management, data quality, and data governance team, and shape how it grows as the program expands

Required Experience

8+ years in data management, data quality, data governance, or related, including 3+ years leading team