Data Governance Lead in London

Everything we do exists to find alpha, investment value the market has overlooked. We believe technology is a genuine source of that edge and core to how we find and act on conviction. Because of this, we are modernising our core platform, investing seriously in our data, and building AI solutions that help us achieve alpha for our clients. Data is the thread that connects all of it. Structured, governed and well-understood data is what turns our investment philosophy into decisions, and what makes our platform and AI ambitions possible. We are aligning the platform, data and AI to work as one.

As Data Governance Lead, you will shape the firm’s Data Governance Framework and embed it across the firm: defining how data domains, ownership and stewardship operate, how data quality is measured and improved, and how governance controls are applied proportionately across the firm’s platforms and business pillars. It is a role with real reach: close enough to the investment process to understand what creates edge, with the mandate to set the standard the rest of the firm works to.

We are committed to our Core Values. We encourage intellectual curiosity, individualism, and collaboration across different areas of the business. We seek to hear our people’s voices – whether quiet or loud. Sharing ideas and challenging the status quo are commonplace.

Your work directly supports Orbis’ investment process and decision-making. While guidance and support are provided, team members are responsible for their own work. We support our people in continuous learning and development. We are committed to providing a work environment that balances the needs of our clients, the needs of our teams, and the personal needs, commitments, and interests of our people. Our people can contribute to society in a unique and personal way, through various philanthropy opportunities and programmes.

What will your responsibilities be?

• Set the direction for data governance at Orbis: own the Data Governance Framework and the roadmap from current to target state, prioritising the work that best enables the investment process and the wider business, and keeping it aligned with the firm’s Data Strategy, AI Strategy, regulatory obligations and target data architecture.
• Lead the firm’s data governance forums, including the Data Governance Group and working groups — setting agendas, driving decisions and actions to closure, and reporting on governance maturity, performance and risk into the IT Governance Group.
• Establish clear accountability for the firm’s data: maintain the register of Data Domains and Critical Data Assets, ensuring each domain has a designated Data Sponsor and Data Owner, resolving ownership disputes, and supporting Owners and SMEs, hands-on where needed, across data quality, access control, metadata and issue resolution.
• Define what data quality means at Orbis in practice — dimensions, rules, metrics, targets and reporting — monitor performance across the domains that matter most to investment and business decisions and drive material quality issues through to remediation.
• Draft, socialise and maintain data governance policies and guidelines, and ensure controls are applied proportionately to data classification, risk and business value — automated in the platform where feasible.
• Partner with Architecture, Platform Engineering and Information Security so that governance is built into design decisions from the outset and is practical to implement.
• Support the firm’s AI data readiness, ensuring data intended for AI and machine learning meets defined standards for quality, completeness and lineage.
• Build data literacy and a culture of data ownership across the firm, through training, guidance and practical support to the business pillars, so that teams see governance as an enabler rather than an overhead.

About You

You are a leader in the governance space: someone who takes ownership of an agenda, sets its direction and drives it forward without waiting to be told what the priorities are. You are pragmatic and credible with it — able to hold a framework to a standard while making it straightforward for the business to comply with, and to judge what is worth insisting on now versus what can wait. You think in terms of the target state and the route to it, and you are comfortable influencing without direct authority. You move easily between drafting a policy, chairing a forum and working a data quality issue through with an engineer or Data Owner, and are motivated by measurably improving trust in data rather than by producing governance artefacts for their own sake.

Skills & Experience:

• Significant experience in a data governance, data management or data risk role, with a track record of owning and driving a governance agenda — setting the direction, sequencing the work pragmatically, and delivering measurable improvement against it.
• Proven experience of establishing or operating a data governance framework in asset management, with a strong understanding of investment, client, operational, regulatory and enterprise data.
• Practical experience defining and operating a data ownership and stewardship model, including domain registers and identification of critical data.
• Experience designing and running data quality management through to remediation, and drafting governance policies and control frameworks and taking them through approval.
• Familiarity with governance frameworks such as DAMA-DMBOK or DCAM, applied pragmatically.
• Hands-on experience with data governance tooling — catalogue, glossary, lineage and data quality — ideally including platform implementation.
• Working knowledge of the data protection and financial services regulatory obligations relevant to a global asset manager.
• Strong communication, facilitation and influencing skills, with experience supporting senior forums, producing clear management information and holding senior stakeholders to their accountabilities.

Instructions for application

To complete your application, please submit your resume.

The Company

We are a global firm with offices across eight countries, over 400 employees and more than $60 billion in assets under management. But those numbers don’t define Orbis. It’s our values, the way we do things day by day, and the value we add for our clients that define us. Our investment philosophy is fundamental, long-term and contrarian. As contrarian investors, we strive to adopt a different perspective, which informs every aspect of our approach. To invest differently, you need to think differently. This is encouraged by having teams of people with different backgrounds, experiences and ways of thinking.