Head of Data Governance Austin, Texas

At The Knot Worldwide, we champion celebration - and that starts with celebrating our people. Our employees are passionate dreamers, thoughtful doers, and lifelong learners who power meaningful moments for millions around the world. We’re united by authentic connection, shared purpose, and a deep commitment to the global community we serve. Here, flexibility and belonging go hand in hand with high performance.

Driven by our core values, we believe the best ideas come from empowered teams: those who consistently collaborate with intention to design solutions, spark ideas, and drive impact. Our people are at the heart of our success.

ABOUT THE ROLE AND THE TEAM:

The Knot Worldwide is seeking a seasoned and strategic Head of Data Governance to lead our global data standards, privacy framework, and data quality initiatives. This critical role sits at the intersection of technology, analytics, and customer experience.

Reporting to the VP of Platform, Data, and Customer Experience
, you will be responsible for defining the policies and technical guardrails that allow our engineering, marketing, and product teams to move fast while maintaining the highest standards of data integrity. You will lead the effort to treat data as a strategic product, ensuring that every customer interaction—from personalization to lifecycle messaging—is powered by accurate, ethical, and compliant data across our entire ecosystem.

Data is foundational to our customer experience, product velocity, financial accuracy, and AI transformation. The
Head of Data Governance ensures that we can scale responsibly—with speed, trust, and confidence. This leader is the guardian of our most valuable asset, ensuring that as we grow, our data remains a strategic accelerator rather than a technical or regulatory bottleneck.

• Access, Privacy & Compliance Ownership: Define and own the execution of global policies for PII, PCI, GDPR, SOC2, and CCPA
  . While partnering closely with Legal, Security, and Risk, you are the primary owner of policy execution and technical implementation.
• Data Strategy & Policy: Define internal vs. external data access protocols and establish technical standards for data collection, retention, and deletion across the global organization.
• Quality & Standards: Own the technical vision for data quality monitoring, metadata management, and the enterprise data dictionary to ensure a "Single Source of Truth" for core business metrics.
• Platform Integration: Collaborate with Platform Engineering to "bake" governance into our data pipelines, ensuring automated enforcement of data standards, lineage, and access controls.
• Data Stewardship & Culture: Establish and lead a cross‑functional data governance council, fostering a culture where data ownership is distributed and understood across Product, Engineering, and Marketing.
• Executive Leadership: Navigate complex organizational dynamics with the ability to influence without authority. Effectively manage stakeholders while possessing the judgment to escalate to executive leadership when required to resolve critical blockers.

• Experience: 10+ years of progressive experience in data management, analytics, or engineering, including 5+ years leading data governance or data quality programs in high‑traffic environments.
• Analytical Proficiency:
  Strong SQL and analytic skills
  ; adept at hands‑on data exploration to inform decisions, define metrics, and guide the optimization of data quality features.
• Executive Communication: Exceptional decision‑making skills with the ability to translate complex technical and regulatory requirements into clear strategic choices for executive stakeholders.
• Background: A professional background spanning Engineering, Analytics, or Platform organizations
  , providing a holistic view of how data flows through a modern tech stack.
• Strategic Vision: Highly skilled at navigating complexity and influencing both technical and business leaders to align on long‑term data standards and ethics.

• Modern Tooling: Hands‑on experience with Snowflake
  , Data Catalogs (e.g., Atlan), and automated quality frameworks.
• CRM & Mar Tech: Experience…