Associate Director, Data Governance-Commercial Operations

About the role

Kyowa Kirin, North America is actively seeking an Associate Director, Data Governance for our Enterprise Architecture & Data Office within Commercial Operations. This is a newly created governance leadership role accountable for establishing and running KKNA’s enterprise data governance program across the enterprise data lake and connected source systems. The Associate Director serves as the operational bridge between the data platform team and the business functions that consume data—ensuring that data assets are findable, documented, trusted, and accessible to the correct people through defined, repeatable processes.

Responsibilities

• Data Access Governance
  • Serve as the first point of contact for all data access requests—triage, classify by data sensitivity, route to the appropriate Domain Data Owner, and track through technical provisioning performed by the Data Platform team.
  • Maintain and publish data access request SOPs so that compliance and legal review is defined at the policy level.
  • Administer a tiered access model across all enterprise data lake environments—covering data scientists, analysts, business users, and external partners.
  • Conduct quarterly access audits to identify and coordinate deprovisioning of stale or excess access.
  • Maintain a complete, documented access log across all data lake workspaces, with rationale for each grant and defined expiration dates.
• Data Governance Operations
  • Draft, maintain, and publish enterprise data governance SOPs covering access requests, patient data boundary rules, new data source onboarding, data quality escalation, and incident response.
  • Own the operational cadence of the Data Management Committee (DMC)—agendas, minutes, action tracking, and the enterprise governance policy register—and prepare materials and recommendations for quarterly DMC sessions.
  • Document end-to-end data lineage for critical datasets, from source system through ingestion to downstream reporting and analytics, in partnership with the technical owners of each layer.
  • Serve as a senior point of escalation for data governance disputes, access conflicts, and policy interpretations across the commercial, medical, market access, and patient services functions.
  • Define and maintain the Domain Data Owner model—assignments, accountabilities, and operating expectations—so that each business function is accountable for the quality and definition of the data it originates.
• New Data Source Onboarding
  • Oversee the compliant acquisition, use, and stewardship of data assets by coordinating with legal, procurement, and business stakeholders to ensure contractual, privacy, and data-use requirements are met.
  • Lead the intake and assessment process for all new data sources entering the enterprise data lake—including business justification, compliance and privacy review, Domain Data Owner assignment, and DMC notification.
  • Ensure every new source has a documented owner, defined refresh SLA, data quality baseline, and catalog entry before promotion to production and downstream consumption.
  • Partner with Data Platform Vendor, IT, and external vendors to ensure appropriate controls and quality standards are applied from data ingestion through downstream consumption.
• Data Catalog & Metadata Management
  • Own and maintain KKNA’s enterprise data catalog—the authoritative directory of all data assets in the Enterprise data lake, legacy Synapse platform, and connected source systems, including business descriptions, data owners, refresh frequency, granularity, and access tier.
  • Document business-friendly metadata for all active datasets and enforce consistent metadata standards across the organization.
  • Build and maintain the enterprise business glossary—canonical definitions for key metrics that currently vary by function (patient, prescriber, market share, conversion, persistence, adherence, etc.)—and drive cross-functional alignment and formal approval of those definitions.
  • Partner with the Data Platform and Data Architecture teams to rationalize the schema catalog—identifying and coordinating the archiving of inactive or redundant schemas from completed projects.
  • Coordinate glossary and data model alignment with the canonical data model initiative and with downstream analytics and reporting teams.
• Data Quality & Vendor SLA Management
  • Establish and maintain a data quality scorecard for priority datasets—specialty pharmacy and distributor feeds, claims, payer policy, tokenized data, and CRM data—tracking accuracy, completeness, and timeliness.
  • Own the data quality issue intake process: receive reports from business users, triage by severity (P1/P2/P3), route to the appropriate technical owner, and track through resolution.
  • Monitor critical vendor data delivery SLAs and escalate failures through defined channels; ensure vendor accountability and corrective action where SLAs are breached.
  • Publish a quarterly data quality scorecard to the Data Management Committee and all Domain Data Owners.
  • Lead P1 incident retrospectives—documenting root causes, remediation actions, and process changes to prevent recurrence.
• Cross-Functional Partnership & User Enablement
  • Act as the primary liaison between the commercial, medical, market access, and patient services business teams and the Data Platform / IT function—translating data requirements, quality expectations, and governance decisions into clear, actionable outcomes.
  • Develop and maintain function-specific data consumer guides—plain-language references to what data each team can access, how to request more, and who to contact.
  • Run new-user onboarding for all enterprise data lake access—ensuring users understand the catalog, available data assets, access tiers, and governance expectations before access is provisioned.
  • Host monthly data office hours—open sessions for business stakeholders to bring data questions, access requests, quality feedback, or glossary input.
  • Define, track, and report enterprise data governance metrics—including data quality performance, issue resolution time, access request cycle time, catalog coverage, and adoption of governed definitions.
  • Champion a data-first mindset across the commercial organization, balancing accessibility and innovation with governance, accountability, and measurable business value.

Requirements

• Education
  • Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (Data Science, Business Analytics, Information Systems, Life Sciences, or equivalent) required; Master’s degree preferred.
  • CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional), DCAM, DAMA, or equivalent data governance certification preferred.
• Experience
  • 8–10+ years of experience in data management, data governance, data catalog, or data stewardship, with a significant portion spent in the pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences industry.
  • Experience supporting or operating a data governance committee, data council, or cross-functional steering group—including charter design, agenda facilitation, decision documentation, and action tracking.
  • Demonstrated experience building or leading an enterprise data governance program from an early stage—including framework design, policy and SOP authorship, data ownership models, and driving adoption across functions outside of direct reporting authority.
  • Demonstrated experience maintaining a data catalog or metadata management platform (Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Microsoft Purview, Unity Catalog, or equivalent).
  • Experience designing and implementing data access governance processes—including role-based access models, tiered access frameworks, and periodic access audit procedures—in partnership with the technical teams responsible for provisioning.
  • Demonstrated experience defining canonical business metric definitions and reconciling conflicting definitions across commercial and non-commercial stakeholders.
  • Experience establishing data quality management practices—scorecards, thresholds, severity-based issue triage, and remediation tracking—for third-party and internally generated data assets.
  • Deep understanding of pharmaceutical data domains.
  • Knowledge of HIPAA, PII, PHI data handling requirements, and pharmaceutical industry data privacy and compliance standards, with demonstrated experience establishing durable data boundary rules in partnership with Legal, Privacy, and Compliance.
  • Demonstrated ability to communicate across both technical and business audiences—translating data infrastructure and governance decisions into plain-language guidance that business stakeholders can act on.
  • Strong written communication skills—demonstrated ability to produce SOPs, data governance policies, data dictionaries, and business-facing reference documents.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional change initiatives and drive results through influence, stakeholder relationships, and clear communication rather than direct authority.
• Technical Skills
  • Working familiarity with cloud data lake or data warehouse environments (Azure Databricks, Snowflake, Azure Synapse, or equivalent) is preferred to support effective partnership with the Data Platform, Data Architecture, and Business teams.