Director, Enterprise Data Governance

Key Responsibilities

• Help lead the development of Toast's multi-year enterprise data strategy, grounded in corporate priorities and aligned with engineering, analytics, AI, and business roadmaps.
• Audit current data management maturity using a recognized framework (DAMA DMBOK, DCAM, or equivalent) and establish a measurable baseline from which to track progress.
• Collaborate with EDS and domain teams to build and maintain organizational buy-in across business and technology leadership.
• Design and implement Toast's enterprise data governance framework, including roles, responsibilities, processes, tools, and escalation paths.
• Establish and operationalize the Data Governance Council: recruit domain executive sponsors and data stewards, define meeting cadence, and manage decision-making and escalation processes.
• Define and maintain the Data Domain Model, assigning clear ownership across all business domains including Finance, GTM, Operations, Product, and People.
• Build and launch Toast's Business Glossary, ensuring critical business terms are defined, agreed upon, and maintained by accountable domain owners.
• Develop, codify, and enforce enterprise data policies covering data quality, access and classification, retention and lifecycle, metadata standards, and acceptable use.
• Define the minimum standards that all data products must meet before being published for enterprise consumption.
• Partner with Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to ensure data policies align with regulatory obligations including GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS.
• Establish a compliance monitoring and reporting framework to track policy adherence and surface risk areas to senior leadership.
• Design and run periodic data governance assessments across business domains, identifying gaps and driving improvement plans.
• Build enablement programs and training to elevate data literacy and governance awareness across the organization.
• Lead change management for governance initiatives, ensuring new policies and practices are adopted sustainably across business and technology teams.
• Lead, develop, and grow the governance team, including the Sr. Manager of Enterprise Data Governance.
• Foster a culture of data accountability where stewardship is a shared responsibility across the organization.
• Serve as a thought leader and internal center of excellence for data governance best practices at Toast.

Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years in data management, data governance, data strategy, or a closely related field; 4+ years in a leadership role.
• Technical Skills: Deep familiarity with data governance frameworks and standards including DAMA DMBOK, DCAM, or equivalent; understanding of modern data platforms and architectures including Snowflake, dbt, cloud data lakes, and streaming; hands-on experience with data catalog and metadata management tools such as Alation, Collibra, or Atlan; familiarity with data privacy and compliance regulations: GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS; experience with data quality frameworks and observability tooling such as Monte Carlo.
• Leadership & Communication: Exceptional stakeholder management and executive communication skills, able to influence at the VP and C-level; strong program management skills; proven ability to drive complex, cross-functional initiatives from design through sustained adoption; ability to translate abstract governance concepts into practical, durable frameworks that business stakeholders can adopt and own; high credibility with both technical teams including data engineers and architects, and business functions including Finance, Legal, and Operations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Preferred: Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP) or equivalent certification.
• Preferred: Experience in the restaurant, hospitality, fintech, or B2B SaaS industry.
• Preferred: Familiarity with AI governance and responsible AI data practices.
• Preferred: Experience building governance programs in a high-growth company or post-acquisition integration context.

What You'll Need To Thrive

• AI at Toast: Embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture.
• Total Rewards Philosophy: Competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry.
• Toast's Approach to Hybrid Working: A hybrid work model that fosters in-person collaboration while valuing individual needs.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Embedding principles into our culture and design to create equitable opportunities for all and raise the bar in delivering exceptional experiences.

Pay & Benefits

• Base Salary Range: Zone A $230,000—$368,000 USD, Zone B $200,000—$320,000 USD, Zone C $180,000—$288,000 USD.
• Total Rewards Components: Cash compensation (overtime, bonus/commissions if eligible), equity, and benefits.