Sr. Director, Data Quality & Governance

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting-edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze℠, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Positions located in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York follow a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

Determines strategy and implements data quality standards, metrics and reporting for the organization’s enterprise data assets. Leads significant data architecture transformation to increase the value of our data while mitigating risk and reducing costs and improving services.

Essential Functions

• Leadership: Provides exceptional leadership in building, developing, and inspiring a highly engaged, high performing team. Effectively motivates people, instills accountability, and demonstrates the value of data across a wide range of individuals (engineers, data scientists, analysis, service owners, executives, customers, auditors, etc.). Leads cross-functional teams to solve complex problems and uses sophisticated analytical thought to exercise judgement and identify innovative solutions.

• Vision and Strategy: Develops, drives, and communicates the Enterprise Data Quality Strategy that influences and aligns with the company’s overall goals and vision. Implements and enforces Data Governance standards and policies for areas such as data consistency, quality, privacy, and security; ensures our data assets are reliable, trusted, accessible, understood, and utilized in a consistent, compliant, and meaningful manner, ultimately fueling our business growth.

• Metrics and Analytics: Defines and monitors key performance and risk indicators for data quality and governance. Leads organization-wide awareness and communication of data quality and remediation activities, ensuring seamless implementation. Demonstrates enterprise impact of data quality and governance programs and initiatives.

• Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborates closely with executive leadership, business partners, and clients to understand their data needs and create appropriate data quality and governance initiatives and prioritize them accordingly. Builds strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders and effectively drives consensus across organizations and clearly articulates governance strategy, vision, and business value.

• Budget Management: Manages the budget for data quality and governance, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently to achieve strategic objectives. Develops business cases for data quality enhancements and remediation projects, demonstrating clear value to the organization for prioritization and funding.

• Commitment to Risk Management: Oversees the integration of strong risk and security controls. Ensures compliance to laws and regulations. Support the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.

• Technical Understanding: Able and adept at working directly with the technologists to deliver. Clearly defines requirements, grooms user stories, motivates technical teams and partners with technology closely.

• Supports the company’s commitment to risk management and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of systems and data.

• The above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow instructions and perform other related duties as assigned by their supervisor.

Minimum Qualifications

• Education and/or experience typically obtained through completion of a bachelor’s degree in STEM or related field.

• Minimum 12 or more years of related work experience.

• Minimum 3 year's leadership, management, or supervisory experience with demonstrated ability to build and retain highly engaged, high performing cross-functional teams.

• Demonstrated expertise leading impactful enterprise Data Quality and Data Governance initiatives while successfully influencing cross-functional stakeholders.  

• Demonstrated expertise in managing and mitigating data quality issues (e.g., profile, standardize, cleanse, and enrich) and leading deep dive analysis to uncover issues and root cause of fraud.

• Demonstrated expertise in data architecture, taxonomy, and integration technologies (ETL, data ingestion and distribution patterns, SQL, NoSQL, large data processing on distributed platforms, data warehousing, R / Python).

• Ability to be agile, proactive, and comfortable with ambiguous specifications.

• Strong understanding of emerging technologies, including but not limited to, cloud architecture, machine learning/AI and Big Data infrastructure.

• Excellent interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills, with the ability to influence executive audiences.

• Hands-on experience managing technology projects.

• Background and drug screen.

Preferred Qualifications

• Additional related education and/or experience preferred.

• Master’s degree in STEM or related field.

• Strong Data Governance background that includes driving strategy, architecture, governance, tooling, or enablement.

• Strong understanding of data management requirements in a regulated industry.

• Prior experience working in payments, financial services or similar regulated industry.

Physical Requirements

Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use of a computer and involves sitting for periods of approximately four hours. Work may require occasional standing, walking, kneeling, and reaching. Must be able to lift 10 pounds occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently. Requires visual acuity and dexterity to view, prepare, and manipulate documents and office equipment including personal computers. Requires the ability to communicate with internal and/or external customers.

Employee must be able to perform essential functions and physical requirements of position with or without reasonable accommodation.

The base pay scale for this position in:

Phoenix, AZ/ Chicago, IL in USD per year is: $210,000 - $240,000.
New York, NY/ San Francisco, CA in USD per year is: $230,000 - $260,000.

Additionally, candidates are eligible for a discretionary incentive plan and benefits.

This pay scale is subject to change and is not necessarily reflective of actual compensation that may be earned, nor a promise of any specific pay for any specific candidate, which is always dependent on legitimate factors considered at the time of job offer. Early Warning Services takes into consideration a variety of factors when determining a competitive salary offer, including, but not limited to, the job scope, market rates and geographic location of a position, candidate’s education, experience, training, and specialized skills or certification(s) in relation to the job requirements and compared with internal equity (peers). The business actively supports and reviews wage equity to ensure that pay decisions are not based on gender, race, national origin, or any other protected classes.

Some of the Ways We Prioritize Your Health and Happiness 

• Healthcare Coverage – Competitive medical (PPO/HDHP), dental, and vision plans as well as company contributions to your Health Savings Account (HSA) or pre-tax savings through flexible spending accounts (FSA) for commuting, health & dependent care expenses.
• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Featuring a 100% Company Safe Harbor Match on your first 6% deferral immediately upon eligibility.
• Paid Time Off – Unlimited Time Off for Exempt (salaried) employees, as well as generous PTO for Non-Exempt (hourly) employees, plus 11 paid company holidays and a paid volunteer day.
• 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave
• Maven Family Planning – provides support through your Parenting journey including egg freezing, fertility, adoption, surrogacy, pregnancy, postpartum, early pediatrics, and returning to work.

And SO much more! We continue to enhance our program, so be sure to check our Benefits page here for the latest. Our team can share more during the interview process!

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Early Warning Services, LLC (“Early Warning”) considers for employment, hires, retains and promotes qualified candidates on the basis of ability, potential, and valid qualifications without regard to race, religious creed, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, protected veteran or disability status or any factor prohibited by law, and as such affirms in policy and practice to support and promote equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and municipal laws. The company also prohibits discrimination on other bases such as medical condition, marital status or any other factor that is irrelevant to the performance of our employees.