24367-Data Ops/Governance Director (MSD) in London

ROLE OVERVIEW

The Data Operations Director is responsible for the end-to-end technical delivery of data and taxonomy solutions for MSD. The outputs of this role directly power MSD’s internal reporting and decision-making, making this a business-critical function with high visibility and impact. The role sits within the MSD Centre of Excellence (COE), acting as a central hub for data governance, taxonomy standards, and reporting best practice. As such, it plays a pivotal role in ensuring consistency, scalability, and quality across global and local market implementations.

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the end-to-end delivery of MSD data and taxonomy solutions, ensuring outputs are accurate, scalable, and support business-critical reporting and decision-making.
• Operate as a key member of the MSD Centre of Excellence (COE), defining and enforcing global standards across data governance, taxonomy, and reporting best practices.
• Lead engagement with multiple local markets to drive adoption of global data frameworks, balancing standardisation with market-specific requirements, constraints, and levels of data maturity.
• Act as the central bridge between global stakeholders and local market teams, aligning priorities, resolving conflicting requirements, and ensuring consistency of delivery.
• Drive taxonomy compliance and data quality across markets, establishing clear governance models and accountability for adherence to global standards.
• Develop and maintain scalable playbooks, frameworks, and documentation to enable consistent market onboarding, implementation, and ongoing governance.
• Clearly articulate the vision, value, and business importance of taxonomy and data governance to market stakeholders, driving engagement, understanding, and long-term adoption.
• Ensure data design and taxonomy structures are aligned to downstream BI, reporting, and analytical use cases, enabling effective and consistent insight generation.
• Translate business and market requirements into scalable, future-proof data solutions aligned to global architecture and standards.
• Act as the escalation point for critical data and delivery issues, proactively managing risks to data integrity, reporting accuracy, and timelines.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Experience leading delivery of data, taxonomy, or data governance solutions in global, multi-market environments.
• Proven track record working with global clients and local markets, managing differing requirements and levels of data maturity.
• Ownership of business-critical data solutions supporting reporting and decision-making.
• Strong understanding of data governance, taxonomy design, and standardisation at scale.
• Experience driving taxonomy compliance and improving data quality across markets.
• Ability to design and implement scalable governance frameworks, including playbooks and onboarding approaches.
• Experience operating within or alongside a centralised or COE model to drive consistency and best practice.
• Strong understanding of how data structures support downstream BI, reporting, and analytics.
• Experience translating business and reporting requirements into scalable data solutions.
• Good understanding of data infrastructure, integration, and end-to-end data flows.
• Ability to lead workshops, presentations, and market sessions to drive alignment and adoption.

Skills

• Expertise in using work management tools like Asana, Smartsheet (or other similar systems).
• Expertise in using taxonomy management tools like Claravine (or other similar systems).
• Experience with SQL and/or Python.
• Strong Excel skills.
• Experience with APIs.
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation-based communication skills.
• Strong stakeholder management across global and local teams.
• Clear and confident communication, with the ability to articulate data concepts and their business value.
• Structured and solution-oriented approach to problem solving.
• Ability to manage complexity, ambiguity, and competing priorities.
• Collaborative working style with engineering, BI, and client teams.
• Comfortable operating at both strategic and hands-on levels.

Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager. Our objective is to increase this requirement over time, and many of our agencies as well as Omnicom’s corporate group already require five days of in-office attendance.

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