Data Governance Manager

Work Location: Minneapolis, MN

About the Role

This is a high-output individual contributor and team lead role — equal parts program manager, governance practitioner, and internal consultant — responsible for running the day-to-day machinery of the Data Governance Office (DGO) across a 24-month enterprise roadmap in the healthcare domain.

Responsibilities

• Program Operations
  • Own the program plan: maintain the Jira project board, track milestones against the 24-month roadmap, and flag risks and blockers to the DGO Lead weekly.
  • Prepare the monthly Council scorecard pack: pull KPI metrics, draft the narrative, identify escalations, and own all supporting slide content.
  • Coordinate the monthly Data Governance Council: agenda, pre-reads, domain escalations, policy review items, and action tracking.
  • Own the program communications calendar: all-hands kickoffs, domain workshop scheduling, steward onboarding, and literacy curriculum assignment.
• Domain Onboarding & Governance Activation
  • Lead the data domain pilot end-to-end: Data Owner designation, Steward onboarding, Alation orientation, domain workshop delivery, and DQ dimension workshops with the DQ Engineer.
  • Build the domain onboarding playbook from the pilot — the repeatable template used for all remaining domains across program phases.
  • Drive Data Owner designation across all data domains; manage the designation form process in Jira and track completion against 30-day Council commitments.
  • Onboard Data Stewards to Alation: coordinate Alation Academy enrollment, run orientation sessions, and track the 6-week curation ramp per new Steward.
  • Manage the data issue intake process: own the P1/P2/P3 Jira queue, ensure SLA adherence is tracked for program KPIs, and maintain the escalation process.
• Policy & Standards
  • Draft all program domain data policies for DGO Lead review and Council approval, starting with key foundational policies.
  • Maintain the policy register: version control, review schedule, and annual renewal coordination.
  • Own the data classification policy in collaboration with InfoSec to align Alation sensitivity tags to Unity Catalog RBAC tiers.
  • Author per-domain governance playbooks covering Data Owner, Steward, DPO, DQ thresholds, glossary scope, and AI data governance checklists.
• Alation Governance Layer
  • Work with the Alation Catalog Engineer to configure governance workflows: approval chains, steward assignment, policy publication, and DQ Certificate issuance.
  • Own the business glossary governance: term proposal workflow, approval routing, and publication standards.
  • Monitor Alation catalog coverage monthly, identify gaps, and assign remediation to the relevant Steward or DPO.
  • Coordinate AI data governance in Alation: ensure model cards are registered, lineage is documented from source to model input, and AI governance checklists are completed for each active AI use case.

Requirements

• CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional) required at hire or firm commitment to certify within 12 months; DAMA DMBOK2 proficiency is the practitioner foundation for this role.
• 7+ years of experience in data management, data governance, or enterprise program management.
• Hands-on experience with an enterprise data catalogue — Alation strongly preferred; Collibra, Informatica Axon, or Atlan acceptable.
• Demonstrated experience running a governance program across multiple business domains, not just a single department.
• Strong written communication skills: ability to write data policies, governance playbooks, and executive briefing materials that are clear, precise, and appropriate for stakeholders.
• Experience facilitating workshops with both business and technical stakeholders, including DQ dimension workshops with domain VPs and engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Health plan or healthcare payor experience — HEDIS, Stars, Medicare Advantage, or HIPAA familiarity.
• Experience using Jira for governance workflow management beyond standard engineering sprint tracking.
• Familiarity with Great Expectations or an equivalent data quality framework.
• Experience with Databricks Unity Catalogue or an equivalent data-access governance layer.
• CDMP Practitioner or Master level certification.

Skills

• Systematic thinker: Able to see the full data domain program while simultaneously executing day-to-day pilot details.
• Clear writer: Writes policies and playbooks that non-data stakeholders can understand and act on.
• Follows through: Tracks commitments rigorously — the single biggest failure mode in governance programs is well-designed commitments that nobody tracks.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: Regularly encounters situations the playbook doesn't yet cover and navigates them effectively.