Data Governance Lead

About the role

NetApp is seeking an experienced Data Governance Lead to join our Enterprise Data Governance team. This role is ideal for a pragmatic, influential leader who can translate governance principles into practical ways of working across business applications, analytics, A.I. use cases, data platforms, and enterprise processes. The successful candidate will build strong partnerships, guide a distributed stewardship community, and continuously improve the quality, usability, and trustworthiness of data.

Responsibilities

• Implement and continuously improve practical governance processes that strengthen business operations, analytics, reporting, AI readiness, and application outcomes.
• Partner with application owners, analytics teams, data engineers, and business leaders to embed governance requirements into platforms, integrations, reporting solutions, and decision-making processes.
• Guide, coach, train, and mentor a distributed community of data owners and stewards; clarify roles, reinforce accountability, and create reusable practices that enable consistent execution.
• Build trusted relationships across functions and levels, facilitate alignment, resolve competing priorities, and lead outcomes without formal authority.
• Communicate governance concepts in clear business language, develop compelling messages and learning materials, and champion the value of trusted data throughout the organization.
• Apply and evolve enterprise policies, standards, business glossaries, metadata, lineage, controls, stewardship roles, and approval workflows across critical data and applications.
• Lead the definition of data quality rules and measures, facilitate root-cause analysis and remediation, and use evidence to improve end-to-end processes and adoption.
• Serve as a credible advisor who can rapidly grasp business needs and technical architectures, identify practical tradeoffs, and guide teams toward scalable, sustainable solutions.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated success building trust, influencing decisions, facilitating alignment, and managing diverse stakeholders across business and technology organizations.
• Exceptional written, verbal, presentation, and facilitation skills, with the ability to make complex concepts accessible and motivate adoption at all organizational levels.
• Experience training, guiding, coaching, and mentoring a geographically distributed stewardship community, including developing playbooks, learning materials, and repeatable forums.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, navigate ambiguity, resolve conflict, and sustain accountability through influence.
• Sufficient breadth to quickly understand business processes, application landscapes, data flows, analytics use cases, integration patterns, and technical constraints, and to speak with authority in both contexts.
• Experience supporting governed data for reporting, analytics, operational decision-making, and enterprise business applications.
• Working knowledge of stewardship operating models, data quality, business glossaries, metadata, lineage, controls, policies, standards, and issue management.
• Prior experience with one or more of Oracle Cloud ERP, Salesforce, SAP CRM, Snowflake, or metadata management platforms is strongly desired.
• Highly organized, flexible, and hands-on, with a tactical approach to turning strategy into practical deliverables and measurable outcomes.

Additional qualifications

• 10–15 years of progressive experience in data governance, data management, analytics enablement, enterprise applications, business transformation, or a related field within complex global organizations.
• Bachelor's degree in business, information systems, data management, computer science, engineering, or a related field required; advanced degree preferred.
• Relevant certifications in data governance, analytics, metadata management, cloud data platforms, change leadership, or enterprise applications preferred.

Pay

The target salary range for this position is 170,000 - 253,000 USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. The range is based on 'On Target Earnings' (OTE) representing the total potential earnings, which is the sum of the base salary and potential commission earned when performance targets are achieved.