VP - Data Governance & Strategy

The Opportunity

The VP of Data Governance & Strategy is a senior leadership role within Ookla’s Chief Data & Analytics Office responsible for defining and operationalizing the enterprise data governance strategy, policies, standards, and data ownership frameworks that enable trusted, high-quality, secure, and compliant data across Ookla. This role reports directly to the CDAO.

This leader will establish the governance vision, operating model, and cross-functional practices that ensure Ookla’s data is discoverable, well-defined, properly owned, and fit for purpose. Working across product, engineering, analytics, legal, compliance, and business teams, the role will drive a culture of data accountability, data literacy, and responsible data use aligned to enterprise strategy and regulatory expectations.

This position operates in a hybrid work environment and includes approximately 25% travel to support stakeholder engagement, governance program delivery, data quality initiatives, and team collaboration.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and lead Ookla’s enterprise data governance strategy, operating model, policies, standards, and multi-year roadmap.

• Establish and operationalize data ownership, data stewardship, and accountability frameworks across all data domains.

• Oversee enterprise data quality programs, including data quality rules, monitoring, observability, lineage, and remediation.

• Lead data security and privacy governance, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and enterprise data protection standards.

• Build and run the enterprise data catalog, metadata management practices, and data discovery capabilities.

• Drive data literacy, data enablement, and change management programs to build a data-fluent, governance-aware organization.

• Partner with legal, compliance, engineering, product, analytics, and CDAO leadership to embed governance into data platforms, pipelines, and workflows.

• Build, mentor, and develop a high-performing data governance, quality, security, and enablement organization.

Job Qualifications

Required Knowledge, Skills and Attributes

• Deep expertise in enterprise data governance, data quality, metadata management, data stewardship, and data catalog platforms.

• Strong understanding of data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA), data security frameworks, and regulatory compliance requirements.

• Experience defining and operationalizing governance operating models, data ownership frameworks, and enterprise data policies at scale.

• Proven ability to build and sustain data quality programs, observability practices, and data lineage frameworks in complex organizations.