Director, Data Management & Governance

Live Oak Bank; Wilmington (NC); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 262,000; Full time

Job summary

Live Oak Bank seeks a Director of Data Management & Governance to lead data quality, governance, and stewardship programs. You will own metadata, semantic layer, and AI-ready foundations while partnering with business leaders to advance data-as-a-strategic asset at the bank.

The role sits at the intersection of data, business, and enablement, reporting to the CDAO. It requires hands-on leadership, strong communication, and willingness to grow the program across regulatory expectations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in data management, data quality, data governance, or related
• 3+ years leading teams
• Strong track record translating business strategy into data outcomes
• Experience leading a data stewardship or cross-functional data community
• Data governance experience across risk/regulatory environment
• Knowledge of Databricks, Unity Catalog, dbt, and cloud data warehouses
• Excellent communication across audiences, including regulators and SMEs

Responsibilities

• Build relationships with business leaders and shape a data management agenda
• Partner with the CDAO to prioritize team investments
• Resolve complex data issues and improve data quality at the source
• Prepare data foundations for AI and agentic consumption
• Oversee metadata management and semantic layer development
• Lead the Data Stewardship program and embed data quality checks
• Collaborate on governance, risk, and vendor management

Skills

Data governance

Data quality

Stakeholder management

Communication

Player-coach leadership

Modern data platforms

Tools

Databricks

Unity Catalog

dbt

Fivetran

Monte Carlo

Bigeye

Alation

Collibra

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 teams
• Strong track record of business partnership - translating business strategy and operational needs into data outcomes
• Deep hands-on experience with data quality practices, tooling, and the operational work of driving quality
• Experience leading a data stewardship or similar cross-functional data community
• Data governance experience - designing and running programs proportionate to the risk and regulatory environment
• Working knowledge of modern data platforms - Databricks, Unity Catalog, dbt, Fivetran, cloud data warehouses
• Strong communicator across a range of audiences - business SMEs, Data Stewards, technical partners, regulators
• Comfortable in a player-coach model - doing the work as much as directing it

Preferred Experience

• AI-related data governance experience
• Experience in banking or another regulated financial services environment
• Experience implementing or maturing a data retention program
• Familiarity with Monte Carlo, Bigeye, Anomalo, or similar data quality monitoring tools
• Experience with data catalog tools (Unity Catalog, Alation, Atlan, Collibra) and metadata management approaches
• Exposure to model risk management or SR 11-7
• Exposure to third-party risk management processes in financial services
• Background supporting Data Science or ML teams

Our Values

• Dedication: Possess a deep commitment to Live Oak Bank's mission and core values, exemplified through a strong work ethic, adaptability and pride in your work
• Ownership: Take initiative to deliver positive results by proactively and creatively solving problems, while maintaining a high degree of quality
• Respect: Treat everyone with courtesy, politeness, and kindness
• Innovation: Embrace fresh ideas and fearlessly contribute new solutions to emerging or existing problems
• Teamwork: Foster collaboration, accountability, and trust with others and understand that together, we do more

For a detailed overview of our employee benefits please visit: http://www.liveoakbank.com/careers/

Live Oak Bank is an Aff… Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled. We consider applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, genetic information, veteran status or disability. Equal access to programs, service and employment is available to all persons. Those applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application and/or interview process should notify human resources at [e-mail]. EEO is the Law

The base pay range for this position is $190,180.00 - $262,140.00 per year. Compensation may also include annual bonuses and long-term incentives, subject to various metrics and company policy. A candidate's salary is determined by several factors including travel, relevant work experience or skills and expertise. Please note that we provide at least the minimum requirement of paid sick leave to our employees who reside in states that require employer-paid sick leave, including but not limited to Arizona, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

More than just a job, a career at Live Oak is an opportunity to mold the future of the banking industry. Live Oak Bank would not be the top SBA 7(a) and USDA lender in the country without our people. We focus on hiring folks who are dedicated to living our values, every single day. Together, we're on a mission to be America's small business bank. At Live Oak we never lose sight of focusing on the well-being of our folks. We believe our employees are the heart of our company and drive our commitment to our customers. As part of the Live Oak team, you'll have the chance to shape the next chapter of banking while supporting the backbone of our nation - small businesses.