Director, R&D Data Governance — Build AI-Ready Data Strategy

Smith Hanley Associates; Massachusetts; Hybrid; USD 189,000 - 231,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Bonus potential

LTI

Job summary

Smith Hanley Associates seeks a Director, R&D Data Governance for a mid-size pharma client in the Greater Boston area. This hybrid role involves in-office presence 3x per week and leads the creation of an enterprise data governance function for R&D data to accelerate scientific innovation.

You will own strategy, governance model, data quality, and FAIR/AI-ready data, partnering with IT, Data & AI, and Engineering to enable self-service by scientists.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading R&D data governance within pharma.
• Strong understanding of data governance, quality, metadata, stewardship.
• Knowledge of data catalogs, data lakes, access-control platforms.
• Familiarity with FAIR data and AI/ML readiness.

Responsibilities

• Build the R&D Data Governance strategy and roadmap across Discovery, Preclinical, Translational, Biomarker, and Clinical data.
• Establish the governance operating model, including stewardship, decision rights, standards, processes, metrics, and accountability.
• Drive data quality and standards across metadata, ontologies, lineage, validation, and data management.
• Champion FAIR and AI-ready data principles to support analytics and AI/ML.
• Enable data self-service with policies, workflows, and access models for scientists.
• Partner with R&D, IT, Data & AI, and Engineering to identify critical data needs.
• Influence without authority among scientists and enterprise teams.
• Drive adoption through data literacy and training within R&D workflows.

Skills

R&D Data Governance

Pharma/Life Sciences

Data quality & lineage

Metadata & stewardship

FAIR principles

Executive presence

Job description

Smith Hanley Associates seeks a Director, R&D Data Governance for a mid-size pharma client in the Greater Boston area. This hybrid role involves in-office presence 3x per week and leads the creation of an enterprise data governance function for R&D data to accelerate scientific innovation.

You will own strategy, governance model, data quality, and FAIR/AI-ready data, partnering with IT, Data & AI, and Engineering to enable self-service by scientists.