Senior Data Product Governance & Platform Lead

AHEAD; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

AHEAD is seeking a Data Product Governance Lead to own standards for catalog, lineage, metadata, and data contracts on the Data Platform. You will collaborate with engineers to translate policy and user needs into platform requirements and lead governance modernization efforts.

You will build and mature a small governance function, defining publish criteria, quality measures, and risk controls while partnering with Security, Legal, and Architecture teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years of experience across data governance, data products, data platforms, data architecture, analytics engineering, technical product management, or related disciplines.
• Hands-on experience implementing governance capabilities, including catalog, metadata, and lineage, in a modern cloud data platform.
• Experience defining and implementing data product standards, including ownership, certification criteria, documentation requirements, discoverability, and lifecycle management.
• Experience defining data quality and data contract standards, including measures such as freshness and completeness, schema versioning, and change management.
• Working knowledge of platform governance controls such as RBAC, data classification, masking, and row- and column-level access.
• Experience owning a technical product backlog or roadmap and prioritizing work based on user and business needs.
• Experience working directly with data engineers, including translating policy and user needs into engineering-ready requirements.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence business and technology teams that do not report to you.

Responsibilities

• Catalog, Lineage, and Governance Capabilities Own the backlog and roadmap for the data catalog, metadata, lineage, publication, certification, and related governance capabilities.
• Work hands-on with Snowflake Horizon Catalog and other platform capabilities used for discovery, metadata, lineage, classification, and trust.
• Treat data publishers and consumers as customers of the Data Platform, regularly gathering feedback to understand friction, unmet needs, and opportunities to improve the publishing and consumption experience.
• Translate publisher and consumer feedback into prioritized platform requirements and enhancements for the engineering team.
• Define and monitor measures such as metadata completeness, lineage coverage, quality coverage, certified product adoption, catalog usage, and time to publish, and use feedback and adoption data to improve the platform and standards.

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Snowflake Horizon Catalog

Job description

AHEAD is seeking a Data Product Governance Lead to own standards for catalog, lineage, metadata, and data contracts on the Data Platform. You will collaborate with engineers to translate policy and user needs into platform requirements and lead governance modernization efforts.

You will build and mature a small governance function, defining publish criteria, quality measures, and risk controls while partnering with Security, Legal, and Architecture teams.