Principal Data Governance Lead

Employment Type: Salaried
Work Arrangement: Hybrid

Position Summary:

The Principal Data Governance Lead serves as the IT delivery owner for enterprise data governance, partnering with the Business Data Governance partner to establish governance policies and standards into technology standards, platform controls, and operational practices across the organization. This role will lead MDM implementation on Oracle Fusion, establish data governance frameworks from a technology perspective, covering data quality, data lineage, access controls, and compliance, and own the governance tooling and platform standards that enable the enterprise data strategy. This position will serve as the primary IT delivery lead within the Data Governance Center of Excellence (CoE), partnering with the Business Data Governance CoE to operationalize governance policies across data platforms.This is a hands-on leadership role that requires both strategic thinking and execution depth — defining what good data governance looks like technically and driving adoption across IT and business stakeholders at all levels.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

• Data Governance Framework & Standards:
  Designs and owns the enterprise data governance framework — covering data classification, ownership models, access controls, retention policies, and governance operating procedures. Owns the enterprise business glossary, data catalog, and metadata standards, ensuring consistent definition and lineage visibility across all domains. Partners with Security and Compliance to meet regulatory and audit requirements, continuously maturing the framework as platforms and business needs evolve.
• MDM Implementation & Platform Governance:
  Leads IT delivery of MDM on Oracle Fusion — defining data models, governance rules, hierarchy structures, and stewardship workflows in partnership with business and IT ERP teams. Owns golden record definitions, duplicate resolution rules, and master data lifecycle management across MDM domains. Governs MDM-to-downstream integration patterns ensuring master data flows accurately to EDW, analytics, and operational systems.
• Data Quality, Lineage & Compliance:
  Owns enterprise data quality standards — defining quality dimensions, thresholds, and remediation SLAs across all data domains. Implements end-to-end data lineage tracking from source ingestion through Fivetran, dbt, Snowflake, and BI layers. Ensures governance controls meet compliance and audit requirements; identifies and escalates data quality risks with defined remediation plans.
• Governance Adoption & Enablement:
  Drives enterprise-wide adoption of data governance principles across IT and business stakeholders through training, tooling enablement, and stewardship community building. Develops governance playbooks, stewardship guides, and onboarding documentation. Tracks adoption metrics — data dictionary coverage, stewardship participation, and quality score trends.

Education and Experience:

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Data Management, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in data governance, data management, or enterprise information management, with at least 5 years in a strategy-setting role.
• Proven experience establishing or scaling a data governance function in a complex, matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated success in leading cross-functional initiatives involving data quality, metadata management, data cataloging, and stewardship at the enterprise level.

Preferred:

• Master’s degree in a data-related discipline (e.g., Data Science, Information Management, or Business Analytics).
• Experience working in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), manufacturing, or supply chain–driven industries.
• Experience deploying governance and quality controls in cloud-based environments, including Snowflake and AWS.
• Background in managing third-party vendors or implementation partners related to data governance technology.
• 5 years in a leadership.

Knowledge and Skills:

Required:

• Deep subject matter expertise in data governance principles and best practices, including data ownership, stewardship, data lifecycle management, and metadata strategy.
• Strong working knowledge of data governance technology tools (e.g., Collibra, Informatica Axon, Alation, Microsoft Purview) and experience driving tool adoption across enterprise teams.
• Understanding of data architecture concepts such as data lakes, data mesh, and data virtualization.
• Familiarity with master data management (MDM), data quality frameworks, and business glossaries.
• Strong facilitation and leadership skills to guide Data Governance Councils and working groups toward consensus.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with experience enabling and supporting business data stewards through training and change management.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to convey complex data issues to business and executive stakeholders in clear, actionable terms.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence and build strong relationships across IT, legal, compliance, and business functions.

Preferred:

• Knowledge of Agile, SAFe, or other modern project delivery frameworks and how governance can operate in iterative data environments.
• Experience with regulatory readiness or audit support involving enterprise data management.
• Exposure to Snowflake’s governance capabilities (e.g., tags, masking policies, object-level access controls).
• Ability to balance governance rigor with business agility, focusing on enablement rather than restriction.

Why Join Us:
Ventura Foods innovates and manufactures food solutions for foodservice and retail businesses. We make exclusive products for the world's most iconic restaurants and retailers, we provide ready-to-go product solutions for professional kitchens, and we make consumer brands everyone knows and loves. When you work for Ventura Foods, you get a strong foundation of training, a manager who cares about you and celebrates your success, a safe environment, and challenging work. As part of our team, your future is limited only by how much you’re willing to push yourself to get there. We invest in your growth because you invest in ours.

Ventura Foods offers career growth opportunities as well as competitive compensation and benefits:

• Medical, Prescription, Dental, & Vision – coverage beginning on your 1st day for eligible employees
• Profit Sharing and 401(k) matching (after eligible criteria is met)
• Paid Vacation, Sick Time, and Holidays
• Employee Appreciation Events and Employee Assistance Programs
• Salary Base Range of $130,874.00 - $171,772.65*

*The “base salary range” provided above is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position in the specified markets. Ventura Foods reserves the right to pay outside of the given range based on a variety of factors including but not limited to: candidate skills and experience, complexity of the job, budgetary factors, and location/geography. Ventura Foods conducts regular reviews of compensation ranges and therefore reserves the right to alter this range at any given time.

Diversity & Inclusion:
Our commitment to a diverse and inclusive environment in which all employees are treated with respect is evident in our company culture and values. We believe that fostering an environment of inclusion and a focus on diversity across our organization is vital to attracting top talent, driving innovation, and meeting the high expectations of our customers in a rapidly evolving global marketplace.

Ventura Foods is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.