Data Governance, Director

BlackRock is one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms and a premier provider of global investment management, risk management and advisory services to institutional, intermediary and individual investors around the world. BlackRock offers a range of solutions — from rigorous fundamental and quantitative active management approaches aimed at maximizing outperformance to highly efficient indexing strategies designed to gain broad exposure to the world’s capital markets. Our clients can access our investment solutions through a variety of product structures, including individual and institutional separate accounts, mutual funds and other pooled investment vehicles, and the industry-leading iShares® ETFs. 

Role Brief:

The Data Governance Team is responsible for ensuring the data needs within BlackRock and the clients of BlackRock Solutions are fulfilled with well governed complete, accurate and timely data.   

As a Director of Data Governance, you will support a growing area in a dynamic and challenging environment.  
 

Job Responsibilities:

• Contribute to BlackRock’s Data Strategy 

• Establish policy, standards, processes, and workflows to govern data and metrics to monitor adherence and progress 

• Develop and promote a vibrant data culture and communities to grow business, reduce risk and solve challenges leveraging data  

• Own the implementation and execution of Data Governance policy for all data products to Govern the complete lifecycle of datasets from idea to product deployment and client usage 

• Understand client’s metadata and data requirements and manage client expectations through scalable Agile governance 

• Lead implementation from ideation to deployment of Data capabilities needed to govern different data assets 

• Lead implementation of a standard data models that support data needs of Blackrock and its clients 

• Partner with engineering, product and support teams on data model designs and testing of data products  

• Work closely with data customers both internally and externally to stay abreast of new and evolving business requirements and market trends to align our data capabilities and content with business needs 

• Develop and continuously improve and expand coverage of Governance and capabilities by monitoring progress through KPI’s 

• Provide data solutions, insights and expertise in response to changing business needs, market events, regulatory change and new financial products. 

• Build and maintain high performing Influential relationships with all stakeholders, including data providers, business owners, product owners, Engineers, stewards and operations to manage, monitor and improve the quality of metadata and data through innovative and robust data solutions. 

• Work with Data stewards on profiling and analyzing data to ensure content meets business needs while being compliant with the various dimensions of data quality as outlined in our data quality policy and standards. 

• Implement a data quality framework checks and performance metrics to assess data health and detect deficiencies and improvement with our data sources or internal data processes. 

• Active engagement with key product stakeholders to ensure client data experience is aligned and exceeding expectations 

• Establish goals and manage the team of diverse individuals to deliver business results  

• Create training programs 

This function will expose the candidate to a wide range of BlackRock’s and BlackRock Solutions’ tools and businesses and will require him/her to work closely with internal clients such as portfolio management, account management, operations, BlackRock Solutions as well as external providers and users of data  

Qualifications / Requirements: 

• Strong experience managing internal and external clients and relationships for data products required 

• Strong experience working with Instruments (Equity, Fixed income), Entity, issuer master and/or ESG data is desired 

• Candidate must have excellent communication skills to enable clear articulation, interpersonal skills and influence while working with internal and external clients. 

• Candidate must possess and demonstrate working knowledge of financial markets and general knowledge of the entire investment landscape with strong grasp of current and future data trends and industry practices 

• Hands on ability to work with datasets on different platform/formats using SQL/Python is required.  

• Experience owning and managing Data policies, standards, Controls with excellent understanding of metadata is required. 

• Experience building/understanding architecture and evaluating alternatives for scalability is a plus 

• Experience working with vendors providing reference data is a plus 

• Experience working with Snowflake on cloud is a plus 

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Master and reference data management across multiple asset classes and asset resolution 

• Minimum of 10 years of experience with large-scale data programs  

• Ability to document detailed requirements and transpose them into data specifications and translate them to technical requirements 

• Candidate is expected to think critically about complex business challenges and possess strong problem-solving skills in order to deliver holistic solutions. 

• Candidate must have enthusiasm for, and comfort with, working in a high pressure and fast-paced environment while maintaining quality and the integrity of investment data. 

• Candidate must be able to work in both an entrepreneurial and team-oriented environment. 

• Experience in Agile Development preferred with knowledge of technical tools such as SQL, Python, Jupyter Notebook, Unix commands, Hadoop, Spark SQL, PowerBI or Tableau, etc. a plus 

• Candidate must have strong organizational skills and demonstrate project management experience.