Director, Global Data Strategy and Governance

Cytokinetics is a specialty cardiovascular biopharmaceutical company, building on its over 25 years of pioneering scientific innovations in muscle biology, and advancing a pipeline of potential new medicines for patients suffering from diseases of cardiac muscle dysfunction.

The Global Director of Data Strategy & Governance will lead the development and execution of enterprise-wide data strategy and governance. This role is responsible for data procurement, establishing governance frameworks, driving data quality management, conducting data assessments, and overseeing vendor-supported data operations. Partnering closely with IT, Procurement, and business stakeholders, the leader will embed governance into data platforms and processes, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements and enabling data-driven decision-making across the global commercial organization. This position will report directly to the Executive Director, Operations Strategy and Business Insights.
 

Responsibilities

Data Acquisition Strategy

• Collaborate with business partners to determine the CYTK data needs to drive strategic decisions.
• Manage budget, contracts, renewals, and resource allocations for all data and reporting-related vendors and tools.
• Track value and ROI for vendors, ensuring spending aligns with business impact.

Data Architecture & Governance

• Own the overall data architecture across commercial—how data is structured, connected, and flows through the environment.
• Ensure data governance processes are communicated and being followed for new and updated data, business rules and KPIs and reporting.
• Run the process for evaluating and prioritizing data spend, new data requests, and ongoing management of data assets.
• Maintain clear data standards and best practices to keep data accurate, consistent, compliant, and HIPAA-safe.
• Ensure data is reliable, complete, and ready for downstream use.

Data Vendors & Integrations

• Act as the main point of contact for all external data vendors—manage contracts, SLAs, troubleshooting, and quality issues.  This includes MMIT, Symphony, etc.
• Own the roadmap for how commercial data sources are integrated, transformed, modeled, and maintained.
• Monitor operational data accuracy and resolve issues quickly when data loads or pipelines break.
• Ensure data vendors are adhering to SLAs – quality, operational, etc.

Improving the Data Platform

• Drive simplification and standardization across the entire data ecosystem—reduce unnecessary tools, duplicate data sets, break down silos, and streamline pipelines.
• Work closely with IT on platform needs, upgrades, and day-to-day operational reliability.

Reporting & Business Partner Support

• Partner closely with the Business Reporting team to ensure they have the data needed to build dashboards and reports based on the requirements they gather from the business.
• Translate new or updated business requirements into clear data requirements the data team can execute.
• Make sure all underlying data is accurate, complete, and structured to support reporting, KPI definitions, and measurement strategies.
• Manage and oversee the data development activities to meet reporting timelines and deliverables.
• Maintain a tight feedback loop with the Reporting team as new metrics, dashboards, or enhancements are rolled out.
• Validate that key metrics, definitions, and business rules are supported by the data architecture and modeled correctly for downstream consumption.

Operational Leadership

• Responsible for data ingestion, modeling, quality, and reporting support. Manage vendor resources as required.
• Ensure SLAs for data operations and data availability are consistently met.
• Provide training and guidance on how data sources, pipelines, and reporting datasets work and how to use them effectively.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Management, Information Systems, Computer Science, Life Sciences, or related field.
• 12+ years of experience in data management, data governance, or enterprise data strategy, with leadership responsibility in global organizations. Experience within biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, or other regulated industries preferred.
• Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise data governance and data quality frameworks.
• Strong experience managing data operations and vendor-delivered services, including governance, performance monitoring, and contract alignment.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with Procurement, IT, and business stake