Senior Manager, Data Governance

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in a data role such as analytics engineering, data engineering, or data governance, with hands-on experience in SQL and dbt.
• 3+ years in people management, with a demonstrated track record of developing ICs and managing team delivery.
• Experience owning data governance, data quality, or data standards programs — not just contributing to them.
• Strong proficiency in SQL; working experience with dbt and dimensional modeling sufficient to define standards and review model conformance.
• Demonstrated experience with managing data catalogs or data governance tooling (Atlan, Alation, Collibra, or similar).
• Hands-on fluency with AI tooling as a productivity and automation lever; ability to apply it within the context of metadata management, documentation, and governance workflows.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to drive alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong program ownership mindset: comfortable prioritizing proactively, operating without a defined ticket queue, and driving initiatives that span teams and timelines.

Success Profile

• Lead and develop the Data Governance team — currently two ICs (a Senior Analytics Engineer and a Data Governance Analyst), with further growth anticipated this year — through clear priorities, coaching, and recognition.
• Own the foundational governance buildout: metadata standards and taxonomy, business domain framework, glossary migration and enrichment, data profiling governance, and model conformance for silver- and gold-layer assets.
• Run the ongoing governance programs: asset certification and re-certification, data quality observability, glossary and metrics-catalog freshness, standards enforcement and audit, new asset intake and review, and stakeholder education and adoption.
• Own the data catalog (Atlan) — ensuring the continued accuracy, completeness, and hygiene of asset metadata, glossary terms, and data products; and driving adoption of Atlan as the primary way stakeholders engage with certified data across Justworks.
• Set and enforce certification standards: Governance holds the right to withhold or revoke certification on assets that fail to meet the standard. You’ll exercise that authority credibly and collaboratively.
• Serve as a key subject matter expert for Data & Analytics and cross-functional stakeholders: arbitrate metric and definition differences, and drive company-wide adoption of best practices.
• Drive an AI-native way of working and thinking: accelerate our data governance maturity by leveraging AI for unifying information, enriching metadata, automating governance work and more.
• Contribute to the data governance strategy and roadmap in partnership with Data & Analytics leadership.