Enterprise Data Governance Manager

Working with employers, we provide a financial wellbeing platform as an employee benefit, helping employees to understand their money better, get out of debt faster and save for their future. We already have a reach of circa 4,000,000 employees through our relationships with over 500 of the largest employers in the UK. By improving employee financial wellbeing, we have a very real and meaningful impact on people’s lives. We remove the stress and worry associated with financial difficulties by dramatically reducing the interest rates employees pay on their personal debt, and provide them with the tools needed to start saving sooner and be more financially secure.

Your role in our mission: We are looking for an exceptional Data Governance Manager to build and lead this critical new function at Salary Finance. Sitting in our Enterprise Data team and reporting directly to the Head of Enterprise Data, you will be responsible for designing and building our entire data governance framework across three critical pillars: Data, AI, and Organisational Knowledge Management. This is a foundational, high-impact senior role. Your mission is to build the scaffolding of trust in our data, enabling us to safely scale our loan book to £1bn+ - ensuring critical information, whether it’s in a database, AI model or strategy document is trusted, secure and easy to find. You will be a high-visibility leader, working closely with senior stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Credit Risk, Legal, and Compliance to build a company-wide culture of data ownership.

What you’ll do:

• Architect the Governance Framework & Strategy: You will design, build, and own the operational enterprise data governance framework for our Structured Data (Platforms), Unstructured Data (Documents and Knowledge Base), and AI Models. You will effectively challenge legacy processes and recommend improvements directly to senior leadership to drive change and ensure our governance is effective, not just theoretical.
• Own Data Quality Management: You will define the company’s data quality strategy and own the team’s data quality monitoring strategy and tooling. You will develop repeatable, scalable processes for issue identification, root cause analysis, and resolution, mentoring the business on data quality best practices.
• Drive Technical Implementation (Catalog, Metadata & AI): You will design the metadata layer for our document ecosystem. You will own the strategy and technical roadmap for the data catalog, acting as its primary champion and influencing stakeholders across the business to adopt and contribute to it as the "single source of truth." You will collaborate with Data Science, Legal and Tech to establish the AI Governance Framework. You will define the standards for model registry, training data lineage, and ethical use policies, ensuring we are ready for upcoming AI regulations.
• Build and Lead Data Stewardship: You will launch, manage, and chair the company-wide Data Stewardship program. You will own the entire stewardship program, identifying, training, and effectively influencing senior managers across the business to prioritise their team’s governance responsibilities. You will act as the key partner for our Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams, translating their needs into technical requirements. You will own the operational processes for ensuring data privacy, review the team’s risk frameworks, and help design our Responsible AI Governance policy to ensure we grow ethically and responsibly.

About you:

• Holistic Governance Experience: 3-5+ years of hands-on experience in a dedicated data governance, data management, or data quality role.
• Builder Mentality: You have proven experience in helping to build or run a data governance program from the ground up. You are a pragmatic builder and not just a maintainer.
• Deep Domain Knowledge: You are an expert in modern data governance frameworks, data quality principles, information architecture or taxonomy design, and metadata management.
• Exceptional Stakeholder Skills: You are a master of influencing without direct authority. You have exceptional communication skills and a proven ability to work with senior leaders across technical (Engineering, Product) and non-technical (Legal, Finance) teams.
• Technical Fluency: You have excellent knowledge of SQL and a strong understanding of the modern data stack (e.g., cloud data warehouses like Fabric and BI tools). You must be able to speak the language of our engineers.
• Pragmatic & Diplomatic: You are a problem-solver who sees governance as an enabler, not a blocker. You have a can-do attitude and the diplomacy needed to drive cultural change in a fast-paced environment.

Nice to have:

• Experience in financial services or a similar regulated industry (e.g., FinTech, banking).
• Hands-on experience implementing a Data Catalog tool (e.g., Collibra, Atlan, Select Star, or Fabric's built-in tools).
• Good knowledge of Python for data analysis or automation.
• Direct experience with Data Privacy regulations (GDPR) and/or Responsible AI frameworks.

Who you are: We embrace our differences but there’s one thing we like to share - our values, so it’s important to us that you are:

• Fearless, and able to make the impossible possible.
• Responsible, and want to help build a business that delivers a meaningful difference to society.
• Dedicated and want to commit to an exciting journey even through the highs and lows.
• Empathetic and truly care about every colleague and customer.
• United, because you understand we achieve more when we work as a team.
• Humble, and take feedback as a way to continuously improve.

What do you get for all your hard work?

• 25 days holiday increasing by one day for every year of service up to 30 days, plus a day off for your birthday.
• Hybrid working arrangements so you can work from the office and from home with a budget to help you get set up.
• Generous company benefits to include pension and life assurance and an annual allowance to spend on medical insurance, health cash plan, denplan, gym memberships.
• Enhanced policies that are family and pet friendly, to include company sick pay and peternity leave.
• Great career development in a fast paced environment.
• Regular company socials.
• Volunteer days as part of our CSR program.
• More great perks to include weekly snacks, tuckshop, cycle to work, help to save and much more!

The typical interview process: Introductory call with our Talent Manager (phone call - 20 mins), Past experience interview with Hiring Manager (video call - 30 mins), Technical and culture interview with Team and Stakeholder(s) (in person - 90 mins).

We’re looking for people that will get stuck in and make a difference. We have a great collaborative, entrepreneurial team that are passionate about what they do. If you want to join a team that is changing people’s lives for the better then we’d love to hear from you.

Salary Finance is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment where all employees and applicants can flourish.