Senior Data Governance Program Manager

An overview of this role

As a Senior Data Governance Program Manager, you will turn GitLab’s data governance and quality strategy into tangible, cross-functional programs that improve how data is defined, secured, trusted, and used across the company. You’ll drive alignment between the Enterprise Data Team and partners in Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Success, Product, and other functions to build and scale a governance framework that supports clear data ownership, reliable data quality, and consistent policy and compliance practices. In this highly visible role, you’ll create the operating cadence, standards, and controls that help GitLab team members confidently use data to power decisions, while reinforcing a culture of accountability and data stewardship. Over your first year, you’ll help shape and execute a roadmap of enterprise data initiatives that range from quality improvement and catalog efforts to policy formation and ongoing compliance monitoring.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with business stakeholders to identify, prioritize, and scope data governance and data quality initiatives that support GitLab’s strategic objectives.
• Establish and maintain a scalable data governance framework, including data stewardship, data quality management, and data catalog capabilities.
• Create and run a clear operating cadence for initiative reviews, decision making, prioritization, and staffing across all data governance and quality programs.
• Partner with functional teams to define and staff data steward roles, clarify responsibilities, and ensure ownership of critical data assets across domains.
• Drive accountability for data governance policies and data quality standards through systematic oversight, performance tracking, and transparent reporting.
• Establish and refine controls, audits, and periodic reviews to verify consistent application of data governance policies and standards across business units.
• Apply proven program management practices to plan, execute, and adapt complex, cross-functional data programs while proactively identifying and mitigating risks.
• Provide clear, regular status updates to stakeholders on program assessments, gaps, risks, and progress, and recommend changes based on evolving regulatory and industry trends.

What you’ll bring

• Experience leading complex data governance and data quality programs across multiple business domains and organizational functions.
• Ability to translate complex, cross-functional data requirements into clear, actionable work items and structured program plans.
• Practical knowledge of data management principles, data quality frameworks, and data catalog concepts, with experience applying them in an enterprise environment.
• Skill in designing and facilitating data policy creation and governance processes across the full data lifecycle.
• Proven ability to influence, negotiate, and drive adoption of data governance practices with stakeholders at all levels.
• Experience coordinating work across distributed, cross-functional teams such as Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Success, Product, Legal, IT, and Risk.
• Proficiency using data visualization and reporting tools to communicate insights, surface risks, and support decision making.
• Openness to diverse professional backgrounds, with an ability to apply transferable program or project management skills to data governance and data quality initiatives.

About the team

The Data Governance and Data Quality team is one of four pillars within GitLab’s Enterprise Data Team and focuses on building a data governance and data quality center of excellence in partnership with Business, IT, Security, and Legal teams. We are responsible for defining and operationalizing governance policies, data quality standards, data lifecycle management, and data availability practices that support secure, reliable, and compliant use of data across the company. We work in a fully remote, globally distributed environment and collaborate asynchronously through GitLab issues, merge requests, and documentation to align stakeholders and drive consistent practices at scale. We are currently focused on improving the maturity of data security and quality controls, clarifying accountability for critical data assets, and enabling GitLab teams to confidently use data to make decisions. For more on how we work, see our team handbook page.