Data Governance Program Lead (T1)

CAS uses intuitive technology, unparalleled scientific content and unmatched human expertise to help companies create groundbreaking innovations that benefit the world. As the scientific information solutions division of the American Chemical Society, CAS manages the largest curated reservoir of scientific knowledge, and for 111 years, has helped innovators mine, assess and apply that information to keep businesses thriving. The CAS team is global, diverse, endlessly curious and strives to make scientific insights accessible to innovators worldwide.

CAS is currently seeking a Data Governance Program Lead.  This position will be located in our headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

Key Responsibilities

Governance Program Leadership

• Drive the execution roadmap for data governance across business data domains, prioritizing sequence based on business value creation, and reporting KPIs (to be defined) to the executive steering committee in business terms.
• Translate executive alignment into operational momentum; this role is responsible for making sure it shows up in how the business works with data.
• Assess governance maturity across business data domains; identify gaps in stewardship coverage, data quality rules, and metadata completeness.
• Work with domain stewards to extend governance practices upstream from Snowflake consumption layers toward source systems and pipelines.

Cross-Functional Influence & Stakeholder Engagement

• Operate as a peer to business stakeholders, using steering committee alignment to drive execution and build trust with those who have seen governance stall in the past.
• Present project status, findings, and technical recommendations to the steering committee as requested.
• Demonstrated ability to sequence quick wins ahead of long-cycle structural fixes in ambiguous, low-authority environments.
• Prioritizes ruthlessly: picks the quick win that proves value over the comprehensive fix that takes six months and produces nothing visible.

Data Steward Council

• Design, launch, and run a standing Data Steward Council with structured meeting cadence, decision rights, escalation paths, and action tracking.
• Evaluate the current cohort of named stewards; identify capability or engagement opportunities.
• Build a capable steward network through enablement materials, playbooks, and onboarding guides so stewards can operate independently within defined accountability.
• Coach stewards on data quality remediation, metadata ownership, and issue escalation — not just governance theory.

Data Catalog Stewardship

• Serve as an operational owner to the data catalog as the metadata and governance platform of record, embedding it into workflows across business data domains.
• Maintain catalog continuity — governance rules, steward workflows, domain coverage, and data quality configurations — through any platform transition.
• Partner with data engineers to support automated metadata ingestion from Snowflake and, where applicable, upstream source systems.

Semantic Model Design & Development

• Contribute to the design and extension of a business semantic model providing consistent, trusted definitions for key metrics, entities, and relationships across business data domains.
• Build on existing semantic layer components; extend rather than rebuild.
• Coordinate with engineers, data modelers, and platform architects to ensure semantic model contributions are technically grounded and consumable by self-service tools and AI applications.
• Design and recommend governance processes for semantic model change management — version control, approval workflows, impact assessment.

Data Fluency & Community

• Support and evolve the existing Data Fluency curriculum into an ongoing community capability.
• Contribute to community-building activities: office hours, practitioner spotlights, and domain-specific workshops.
• Track adoption and competency measures; use findings to inform content adjustments.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Management, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent experience.
• 8 years or more of experience in data management, data governance, or related data platform roles.
• Experience delivering components of an enterprise data governance program — including steward network support, data quality frameworks, and catalog workflows.
• Working knowledge of an enterprise data catalog platform (Collibra or Atlan preferred).
• Demo