Director, Enterprise Data Governance

The Enterprise Data Solutions (EDS) team at Toast is on a mission to deliver a trusted, scalable, and governed data foundation that empowers every team at Toast to make decisions with speed and confidence. As Toast scales and AI becomes central to its product and operational strategy, EDS serves as the engine behind that ambition, building the data infrastructure, governance frameworks, and data products that every business function depends on.

As Director of Enterprise Data Governance, you will be the architect of how Toast thinks about, governs, and continuously improves its enterprise data capabilities. You will help lead the development of Toast's multi-year data strategy, build the governance frameworks and policies that make data trustworthy and compliant, and drive adoption of data management best practices across every business domain. You will establish Toast’s data governance framework, codify enterprise data policies and standards, drive data compliance initiatives, own the business glossary, and stand up the Data Governance Council. This role demands a rare combination of strategic vision, program rigor, and the executive credibility to influence leaders across the business, and a genuine passion for making data an organizational asset rather than an organizational liability.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Data Strategy

• Help lead the development of Toast's multi-year enterprise data strategy, grounded in corporate priorities and aligned with engineering, analytics, AI, and business roadmaps.
• Assess current data management maturity using a recognized framework (DAMA DMBOK, DCAM, or equivalent) and establish a measurable baseline from which to track progress.
• Collaborate with EDS and domain teams to build and maintain organizational buy-in across business and technology leadership.

Data Governance Framework

• Design and implement Toast's enterprise data governance framework, including roles, responsibilities, processes, tools, and escalation paths.
• Establish and operationalize the Data Governance Council: recruit domain executive sponsors and data stewards, define meeting cadence, and manage decision-making and escalation processes.
• Define and maintain the Data Domain Model, assigning clear ownership across all business domains including Finance, GTM, Operations, Product, and People.
• Build and launch Toast's Business Glossary, ensuring critical business terms are defined, agreed upon, and maintained by accountable domain owners.

Data Policies & Standards

• Develop, codify, and enforce enterprise data policies covering data quality, access and classification, retention and lifecycle, metadata standards, and acceptable use.
• Define the minimum standards that all data products must meet before being published for enterprise consumption.
• Partner with Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to ensure data policies align with regulatory obligations including GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS.
• Establish a compliance monitoring and reporting framework to track policy adherence and surface risk areas to senior leadership.

Data Maturity & Continuous Improvement

• Design and run periodic data governance assessments across business domains, identifying gaps and driving improvement plans.
• Build enablement programs and training to elevate data literacy and governance awareness across the organization.
• Lead change management for governance initiatives, ensuring new policies and practices are adopted sustainably across business and technology teams.

Team Leadership

• Lead, develop, and grow the governance team, including the Sr. Manager of Enterprise Data Governance.
• Foster a culture of data accountability where stewardship is a shared responsibility across the organization.
• Serve as a thought leader and internal center of excellence for data governance best practices at Toast.

Qualifications

Experience

• 10+ years in data management, data governance, data strategy, or a closely related field; 4+ years in a leadership role.
• Proven experience building and operationalizing enterprise data governance frameworks, including governance councils, stewardship models, and data policies.
• Track record developing enterprise data strategies that have been adopted and executed across large, complex organizations.
• Experience conducting data maturity assessments and driving measurable improvement across business domains.

Technical Skills

• Deep familiarity with data governance frameworks and standards including DAMA DMBOK, DCAM, or equivalent.
• Understanding of modern data platforms and architectures including Snowflake, dbt, cloud data lakes, and streaming.
• Hands-on experience with data catalog and metadata management tools such as Alation, Collibra, or Atlan.
• Familiarity with data privacy and compliance regulations: GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS.
• Experience with data quality frameworks and observability tooling such as Monte Carlo.

Leadership & Communication

• Exceptional stakeholder management and executive communication skills, able to influence at the VP and C-level.
• Strong program management skills; proven ability to drive complex, cross-functional initiatives from design through sustained adoption.
• Ability to translate abstract governance concepts into practical, durable frameworks that business stakeholders can adopt and own.
• High credibility with both technical teams including data engineers and architects, and business functions including Finance, Legal, and Operations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP) or equivalent certification.
• Experience in the restaurant, hospitality, fintech, or B2B SaaS industry.
• Familiarity with AI governance and responsible AI data practices.
• Experience building governance programs in a high-growth company or post-acquisition integration context.

What you'll need to thrive (Requirements)

 

AI at Toast

At Toast, one of our company values is that we're hungry to build and learn. We believe learning new AI tools empowers us to build for our customers faster, more independently, and with higher quality. We provide these tools across all disciplines, from Engineering and Product to Sales and Support, and are inspired by how our Toasters are already driving real value with them. The people who thrive here are those who embrace changes that let us build more for our customers; it’s a core part of our culture.

Our Total Rewards Philosophy

We strive to provide competitive compensation and benefits programs that help to attract, retain, and motivate the best and brightest people in our industry. Our total rewards package goes beyond great earnings potential and provides the means to a healthy lifestyle with the flexibility to meet Toasters’ changing needs. Learn more about our benefits at https://careers.toasttab.com/toast-benefits.