Principal Analyst, Data Governance and AI Readiness

Responsibilities

• Lead metadata management, data lineage, and data catalog initiatives; leveraging agents to create a holistic and evergreen view of Finance’s data governance artifacts
• Define and operationalize governance policies, standards, decision rights, and minimum control requirements for data products, metadata, lineage, semantic models, data quality, access, and lifecycle management.
• Resolve complex governance issues and competing stakeholder priorities through structured decision-making, escalation, and risk-based recommendations.
• Establish measurable governance outcomes and adoption indicators, and communicate progress, risks, dependencies, and investment needs to senior leadership.
• Create reusable frameworks, standards, implementation patterns, and reference materials that can be adopted across data domains and delivery teams.
• Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives where requirements, ownership, technology direction, or operating models are not yet fully defined.
• Influence build of semantic layer designed for maximum consumption across current and future AI project landscape
• Develop standardized data meanings, derived from master data, and readable by both humans and machines
• Partner with technical team to create metric definitions alongside new data product development
• Partner with business stakeholders to align data and metric definitions with business objectives
• Facilitate data governance councils, working groups, and stakeholder meetings
• Translate technical data concepts into business-friendly language and vice versa
• Identify governance gaps and recommend pragmatic, scalable solutions
• Ensure solutions use governed business definitions, approved semantic models, certified data products, and authoritative metadata rather than recreating or inferring business logic independently.
• Support regulatory and compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, SOX, CCPA, HIPAA)
• As the team grows, mentor junior analysts and act as a subject-matter expert for data governance best practices

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Data Management, Business, or a related field
• 5+ years of progressive experience in data governance, data management, data architecture, analytics, AI governance, or related disciplines, including demonstrated leadership of complex, cross-functional initiatives in a large enterprise
• Strong understanding of data governance frameworks (e.g., DAMA-DMBOK)
• Experience with semantic models, metadata management, and master/reference data
• Familiarity with data privacy and regulatory compliance requirements
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence without formal authority
• Proven ability to work across business and technical teams

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or relevant certifications (CDMP, DGSP, etc.)
• 7+ years of progressive experience in data governance, data management, data architecture, analytics, AI governance, or related disciplines
• Experience with data governance tools (Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Purview, etc.)
• Familiarity with Finance data
• SQL, dbt, Alteryx, Tableau or similar languages/packages
• Data analysis skills
• Experience with agent orchestration
• Experience in large, complex, or highly regulated environments