Product Data Vendor Manager

At T. Rowe Price, we identify and actively invest in opportunities to help people thrive in an evolving world. As a premier global asset management organization with more than 85 years of experience, we provide investment solutions and a broad range of equity, fixed income, and multi-asset capabilities to individuals, advisors, institutions, and retirement plan sponsors. We take an active, independent approach to investing, offering our dynamic perspective and meaningful partnership so our clients can feel more confident.

We believe doing the right thing for our clients and our associates is good business. With a career at the firm, you can expect opportunities to create real impact at work and in your community. You’ll enjoy resources to support your career path, as well as compensation, benefits, and flexibility to enrich your life. Here, you’ll find a collaborative culture that respects and values differences and colleagues who share a spirit of generosity. Join us for the opportunity to grow and make a difference in ways that matter to you.

POSITION PURPOSE

The role will act as the internal coordinator between business units (Product, Compliance, Legal, ESG, Client Reporting, Performance & Analytics, Technology) and external Fund data and information vendors, ensuring that fund data used to enable distribution activity and within regulatory disclosures meets the evolving requirements of our clients as well as global and European regulations. The role will also focus on developing and maintaining an internal governance model and supporting processes working across multiple business units to curate and collect data necessary for consumption into product data templates (OpenFunds, EPT, EMT, EET, etc.); to manage and oversee external vendors (e.g., Fundsquare) responsible for the creation and dissemination of product data templates into the market place, ensuring accurate, timely, and compliant data flows across the distribution value chain.

Key Responsibilities:

• Vendor Management & Oversight: Own the operational relationship with key data vendors (e.g., Fundsquare) including SLAs, KPIs, issue resolution, and continuous improvement. Ensure vendors are delivering accurate, complete, and timely regulatory templates (OpenFunds, EMT, EPT, EET, etc.). Conduct operational service reviews and periodic due diligence to ensure the ongoing integrity of services and that T. Rowe Price continues to receive the best possible service. Work with Vendors to ensure alignment of routines across the value chain so that T. Rowe Processes data templates hit the distribution market consistently and timely. Monitor regulatory & product change working with Product Teams and work with vendors to ensure readiness and compliance updates are implemented accordingly. Stay close to market developments in data and workflow automation, joining industry working groups and forums to stay in front of innovation in this space.
• Internal Coordination: Liaise with internal stakeholders (Product, Distribution, Client Service, Compliance, ESG, Operations, Risk, Legal, Client Reporting, Performance & Analytics, Data Office & Technology) to put in place efficient and risk managed processes to gather validated data inputs needed for template generation. Maintain ongoing collaborative relationships to ensure alignment end to end. Develop and maintain a governance framework for data ownership, accountability, and control for the purposes of maintaining effective and efficient data lineage and transposition processes to support the delivery of the regulatory templates in scope. It is not expected that this role becomes the data owner of data created and provided by other business functions nor assumes accountability for those functions data processes in ensuring the integrity of source data provided by upstream business units. It is however, responsible for working with the service vendors to ensure the production of in scope templates use the data provided without corruption and/or highlight anomalies that can be investigated to ensure data quality. Coordinate regular working group meetings or workshops to review changes in template content, data quality, and regulatory requirements, ensuring end to end business processes are updated to ensure compliant delivery.
• Template Lifecycle Management: Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of industry data standard and regulatory templates—from data input through generation to dissemination via industry platforms (e.g., FundInfo, European MiFID Template Exchange). Stay up to date with evolving data models and technology (e.g., Openfunds evolution, EMT v4.1, EET v1.1) and update internal processes accordingly. Support the onboarding of new funds, share classes, and markets into the regulatory template framework. Maintain insight into industry best practices and help define strategic vision for evolution in this space internally.
• Data Quality and Controls: Define and monitor data quality metrics and exception reports for regulatory templates, working with the vendor. Ensure data lineage is appropriately mapped working with data owners to ensure data discrepancies in data templates can be easily traced back to data owner. Ensure root cause analysis for data discrepancies or dissemination failures has occurred working with data owners/vendors so that data owners/vendors can mitigate and track through to completion. Support remediation efforts and develop control enhancements. Carry out continuous improvement analysis and prioritise execution of the same for ongoing development of T. Rowe Price’s capabilities. Create and maintain MI to demonstrate timeliness and accuracy.
• Governance, Documentation & Process Optimization: Maintain up-to-date documentation of governance, processes, controls, and roles/responsibilities. Prepare MI and analytics to report to COO Line Management, Executive Committees and Boards as necessary. Identify and lead opportunities for automation and process optimization within role scope. Attend industry seminars and networks to stay aware of industry best practice and deliver insight and opportunities internally.
• Clients & Products: Work closely with Product, Distribution & Client Service to develop a strong understanding of our product set and clients, including T. Rowe Price’s distribution strategy and value chain and how data templates/client collateral is being accessed, used and consumed by our clients to inform evolution of our internal processes. Work closely with our procurement, third party risk, data office and technology to ensure we develop strong vendor management, take on, due diligence and ongoing due diligence and work with our data office and technology to ensure we are leveraging Enterprise Data framework and Supplier Management protocols and principles to achieve best practice.

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES / SKILLS / QUALIFICATIONS

Required:

• Skills & Competencies:
• Stakeholder Management (Internal): Requires the ability to navigate the organisation, build collaborative networks and strong productive and mutually beneficial stakeholder relationships, managing expectations.
• Relationship Management (External): Requires the ability to develop trusted relationships with vendors, demonstrating the ability to understand their processes and service opportunities.
• Project Management: Requires excellent planning capabilities and the ability to lead others through a process of delivery for the benefit of our clients and business.
• Industry Expertise: Demonstrates a willingness and ability to develop industry acumen that enables broader understanding of the vendor landscape and industry best practices, client expectations, enabling T. Rowe Price to anticipate client needs, drive innovation and continuous improvement. Has excellent working knowledge of Technology innovations around data and workflow augmentation, Artificial Intelligence, Products, Markets, Product Regulation, Distribution landscape and has sound understanding of the complexities of fund distribution in the European market.
• Organisational Discipline: Demonstrates the ability to organize self and others, prioritise appropriately, deliver high quality work product, with attention to detail, with a sense of urgency, follow procedures/policies set by the department or firm.
• Process development and augmentation: Demonstrates a process mindset to help the organization build and maintain resilient end to end business processes to support client outcomes in this space.
• Influencing for results: Demonstrates emotional intelligence and the ability to consider others’ perspectives, possessing excellent negotiation skills, ability to manage through friction and ambiguity, resilience under pressure and the ability to stand firm but remain diplomatic.
• Consultative approach: Demonstrates the ability to uncover unstated needs and concerns, through confident dialogue, listening non-defensively, questioning and clarification of understanding.
• Enterprise Knowledge: Demonstrates the ability and enthusiasm to learn deeply about the capabilities across T. Rowe Price beyond role.
• Critical Thinking and Analysis: Demonstrates a solution-driven mindset, able to consider challenges and problems broadly, with a focus on risk awareness and operational resiliency.
• Team collaboration: Demonstrate ability to work independently whilst also leaning in to fostering a close team working supportive environment.

Education & Experience:

• Previous experience working within a data vendor/suppliers (such as Fundsquare, Financial Express, Factset, SIX, AlphaSense, FE Fundinfo, Morningstar, WM Daten etc.), and/or other Asset Managers or Financial Service Groups supporting vendor management related to Products and Client Services, data management and solutions, technology and workflow, client service, client operations or fund distribution in the EMEA region with a minimum of 5-7 years’ experience.
• Knowledge of Fund related regulations and its relevance determining the need for various product related data assets and artefacts with an appreciation of how they are consumed and used through the distribution value chain.

Preferred but not essential:

• Experience of working in the EU Intermediary/Fund Distribution marketplace.
• Investment domain Knowledge – familiarity with investment data; Fund identifiers; holdings, trades; benchmarks, performance, attributions and other Fund related characteristics.
• Interest in AI and exploring optimization opportunities for data management and to streamline data dissemination processes (operating within T. Rowe Price control framework).
• Technical proficiency with MS Excel; Tableau; Power BI, VBA, JIRA; Experience with APIs, SFTP, file formats: CSV, XML, JSON, Excel; Comfort with PGP encryption, file versioning and delivery logging; Knowledge of ETL tools and data transformation techniques; experience with data dictionaries, metadata and data lineage.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:

At T. Rowe Price, our associates are our greatest asset. We thrive because our company culture is built on inclusion and because we sustain a work environment where associates can bring their best selves to work every day. The backgrounds, talents, and experiences of our global associates allow us to embrace new ideas and perspectives that move our business priorities forward and enable us to deliver strong client outcomes. Here, you can expect equal opportunity and fair and consistent treatment for all. T. Rowe Price is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity of thought, gender, and race. We believe our continued success depends upon the equal treatment of all associates and applicants for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed, colour, national origin, sex, gender, age, mental or physical disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, citizenship status, military or veteran status, pregnancy, or any other classification protected by country, federal, state, or local law.

About Us: T. Rowe Price is an asset management firm focused on delivering global investment management excellence and retirement services that investors can rely on–now, and over the long term.