R&D Data Governance Director — Build Strategy & Stewardship

Smith Hanley Associates; Waltham (MA); Hybrid; USD 189,000 - 231,000; Full time

Job summary

Smith Hanley Associates is seeking a Director, R&D Data Governance for a mid-size pharma manufacturer in Greater Boston. This hybrid role requires 3 days in office and offers $210k base salary plus bonus and long-term incentives.

You will build the R&D data governance strategy across Discovery through Clinical, establish the operating model, and drive data quality, metadata, lineage, and access controls to enable AI-ready analytics.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in R&D data governance in pharma or life sciences.
• Strong knowledge of metadata, stewardship, lineage and access management.
• Experience with enterprise data-management technologies.
• Ability to partner with scientists, IT and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Build the R&D Data Governance strategy and multi-year 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, controlled vocabularies, lineage, validation, and data management.
• Champion FAIR and AI-ready data principles, ensuring R&D data can support advanced analytics, AI/ML, and emerging technologies.
• Enable data self-service by developing practical policies, workflows, and access models that allow scientists and analysts to find and confidently use trusted data.
• Partner with R&D, IT, Data & AI, and Engineering to identify critical data needs and implement scalable governance and data-management capabilities.
• Influence without authority, serving as the key connector between scientific stakeholders and enterprise data/technology teams.
• Drive adoption and change through data literacy, training, communication, and embedding governance into everyday R&D workflows.

Skills

R&D Data Governance

Data Management

Data Strategy

Stakeholder Management

Executive Communication

Data governance tools

Tools

Data catalogs

Data lakes

Data platforms

Access-control solutions

Job description

Smith Hanley Associates is seeking a Director, R&D Data Governance for a mid-size pharma manufacturer in Greater Boston. This hybrid role requires 3 days in office and offers $210k base salary plus bonus and long-term incentives.

You will build the R&D data governance strategy across Discovery through Clinical, establish the operating model, and drive data quality, metadata, lineage, and access controls to enable AI-ready analytics.