Data Governance Manager

Trustworthy AI starts with trustworthy data. As CBRE builds AI agents across its People function, this role ensures the data behind them, in one priority domain, is governed, well-defined, and fit to rely on. CBRE is running a significant People AI transformation to enable AI-powered experiences, automation, and agentic workflows across the People function, starting with Talent Acquisition and People Services. This role represents People Data & Insights (PDI) within that program and keeps People data trusted, governed, documented, and fit for purpose.

Responsibilities

• Data stewardship and governance
  • Serve as the designated Domain Data Steward for your domain, facilitating stewardship while business Data Owners retain sign-off on definitions and business rules.
  • Partner with Data Owners, business stakeholders, and Technology teams to promote effective stewardship of People data assets.
  • Support enterprise data governance standards, policies, and controls, ensuring data assets meet security and compliance requirements.
  • Run stewardship activities through governance forums, working groups, and stakeholder engagement.
• Business definitions and semantic modeling
  • Develop and maintain the domain's business glossary, Critical Data Element inventory, and metadata documentation.
  • Own the domain's semantic model, expressing its entities, relationships, and business rules in the ontology and glossary, ensuring traceability for reporting, analytics, and AI.
  • Act as custodian of semantic and access decisions made during AI design work, capturing them into a durable, governed domain model.
  • Specify access and permission rules for the domain's data, aligning with shared architecture principles to prevent divergence across People domains.
• AI and data readiness
  • Ensure data consumed by AI agents, automation, and analytics products is governed, trusted, and documented.
  • Identify and manage AI-critical data assets, helping define requirements for AI-approved datasets and certified business data products.
  • Partner with AI delivery teams to ensure data used in AI solutions is appropriately governed and traceable, supporting responsible AI practices.
• Data quality and lineage
  • Support data quality monitoring and issue management, coordinating assessment and remediation of quality concerns affecting operations or AI.
  • Maintain visibility of data lineage across source systems and downstream consumption layers, working with Technology teams to keep lineage and metadata current.
• Stakeholder partnership
  • Represent People Data & Insights within strategic transformation initiatives.
  • Build strong partnerships with HR leaders, Technology teams, governance functions, and business stakeholders.
  • Educate stakeholders on governance principles and stewardship responsibilities, supporting adoption of data-driven decision-making and best practices.

Your domain

You will steward one of the priority People domains and know its processes, data, and platform in depth:

• Talent Acquisition: recruiting operations, requisitions, candidate lifecycle, sourcing and hiring, on Avature.
• People Services: HR service delivery, employee lifecycle transactions, case management, and knowledge management, on ServiceNow.

In either case: the definitions, rules, and metrics that describe your domain, and the data it feeds to analytics, automation, and AI.

Requirements

Essential

• A bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience in data governance, data stewardship, or data management, including documenting business rules, data definitions, and governance processes.
• A strong understanding of either Talent Acquisition or People Services processes and the data they generate, with hands-on experience of the relevant platform (Avature or ServiceNow). Data modeling skills to express entities, relationships, and business rules in a semantic model or ontology, sufficient to challenge, validate, and shape data definitions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with stakeholder management skills to build productive relationships across business, functional, and technical audiences, balancing competing priorities with clarity and confidence.
• Comfortable working independently in a global, matrixed role across time zones, with interpersonal skills, cultural awareness, and energy to build relationships and momentum. Sensitivity to regional compliance, employment law, and market-specific adoption.
• Organized and delivery-focused, with a track record of keeping complex, multi-workstream initiatives on track and escalating risks early and clearly.
• The ability to translate data into clear key performance indicators (KPIs) and insight, with a commercial focus on the decisions and value the data supports.

Desirable

• Familiarity with the DAMA-DMBOK data management framework and data governance best practices.
• Experience supporting AI, analytics, or digital transformation initiatives, with familiarity with AI agent concepts, automation design, or agentic workflow architecture. Strong appetite to deepen this in a live delivery environment.
• Experience with metadata management, business glossaries, and data lineage, and with cataloging and governance tools such as Collibra or Microsoft Purview.
• Data architecture experience, including Snowflake and medallion architecture, and exposure to ontology, semantic layer, or knowledge-graph design.

You do not need every desirable item. If you meet the essentials and the role excites you, we want to hear from you.

Benefits

When you join CBRE, you become part of the global leader in commercial real estate services and investment that helps businesses and people thrive. We are dynamic problem solvers and forward-thinking professionals who create significant impact. Our collaborative culture is built on shared values — respect, integrity, service, and excellence — and we value diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and skillsets. At CBRE, you have the opportunity to chart your own course and realize your potential.