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Director of Data Strategy & Governance

Private Credit/Equity - Greenwich CT

J Harlan Group is currently conducting a search for a strategic, hands-on leader to serve as their first Head of Data Strategy & Governance. Director of Data Strategy & Governance at a prominent Greenwich CT Private Credit/Equity organization.

The Director of Data Strategy & Governance will be a significant contributor to enabling the firm’s overall data vision and helping the organization to grow and improve their businesses.

This is a high-impact, newly created role that will define and own the firm's enterprise data program from the ground up. The successful candidate will partner closely with Investment, Finance, Risk, Compliance, and Technology teams to understand data needs, rationalize and document their data landscape, establish governance and quality standards, and ensure their data assets are structured, trusted, and AI-ready.

This role sits within the Strategic Initiatives organization and reports directly to the Managing Director, Strategic Initiatives, with a dotted line to the CTO for platform, tooling, and AI execution. It is a unique opportunity to shape how a sophisticated investment firm thinks about and operationalizes data as a strategic asset.

The firm views Data as a distinct commercial advantage - enabling a host of opportunities that differentiate them from their competitors.

The firm is a fast-growing and dynamic investment organization that is experiencing exceptional growth and is looking for exceptional people to power its next phase of growth.

Principal Responsibilities:

Data Strategy & Roadmap

• Define and own the firm’s multi-year data strategy, aligning it with firm-wide investment and operational priorities.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive data roadmap covering sources, platforms, integration patterns, and analytics capabilities.
• Serve as the internal thought leader and evangelist for data and AI readiness across the organization.

Data Inventory & Source Management

• Conduct a full audit and inventory of all internal and third-party data sources (e.g., DealCloud, Databricks, Bloomberg, Octus, Green Street, Yardi, and partner-owned platforms such as Snowflake environments).
• Document data lineage, ownership, refresh cadences, formats, and access patterns for each source.
• Partner with vendors and internal teams to expand and rationalize the data estate as business needs evolve.

Data Governance

• Design and implement a formal data governance framework, including policies, standards, roles, and accountability structures.
• Establish a data stewardship model across key business domains: Entity, People, Security/Instrument, Investment Opportunity, Commitment & Capital, Transaction, and Position/Holding.
• Define and enforce data classification, retention, access control, and privacy policies in coordination with Legal and Compliance.
• Chair or co-chair a Data Governance Committee with cross-functional representation.

Data Dictionary & Data Modeling

• Build and maintain a firm-wide business glossary and data dictionary, defining authoritative definitions for all key data entities and metrics.
• Design and document canonical data models across the firm's seven core data domains.
• Establish naming conventions, attribute standards, and entity relationships to enable consistent downstream consumption.

Data Quality

• Define data quality dimensions (completeness, accuracy, consistency, timeliness) and implement monitoring and alerting.
• Partner with engineering and analytics teams to embed data quality checks into ingestion pipelines and transformation layers.
• Establish SLAs for critical data assets and track remediation of quality issues.

AI Readiness

• Lead the effort to make the firm's data estate AI-ready—structured, labeled, governed, and accessible for LLM and ML workloads.
• Partner with the CTO and technology team on Databricks Genie Spaces, natural language query interfaces, and the firm’s AI Bot initiative.
• Identify and remediate gaps in data structure, documentation, and coverage that limit AI use cases.
• Work with AI Committee members to prioritize high-value data and AI opportunities across investment and operational workflows.

Stakeholder Partnership & Change Management

• Conduct structured discovery sessions with Investment, Finance, Operations, Compliance, and Technology leaders to understand current pain points and future data needs.
• Translate business requirements into data strategy initiatives with clear owners, timelines, and success metrics.
• Champion a data-literate culture across the firm, delivering training and enabling self-service analytics adoption.

The ideal candidate would have a background including:

Required

• 8+ years of progressive experience in data strategy, data management, data engineering, or enterprise data governance.
• Demonstrated experience building or leading a data governance program, including frameworks, data dictionaries, and stewardship models.
• Strong background in data modeling concepts (conceptual, logical, physical) and familiarity with financial services data domains.
• Experience working with cloud data platforms such as Databricks or similar modern lakehouse environments; familiarity with partner-managed platforms such as Snowflake is a plus.
• Proven ability to operate cross-functionally and influence without direct authority in a complex, fast-moving organization.
• Strong communication and presentation skills; able to translate technical data concepts into clear business value.
• Experience in asset management, private equity, hedge funds, or financial services strongly preferred.

Preferred

• Familiarity with AI/ML data requirements, vector stores, embedding strategies, and prompt engineering for structured data.
• Experience with metadata management and data catalog tools (e.g., Alation, Collibra, Microsoft Purview, or similar).
• Exposure to industry data standards in credit, real estate, or alternative investments (e.g., EDGAR, MSCI, Green Street, Octus/Reorg).
• Understanding of compliance and regulatory requirements relevant to data handling in investment management (SEC, GDPR, etc.).
• Familiarity with BI/analytics tools such as Databricks SQL, Sigma, Power BI, or Tableau.
• Experience working in a lean, high-ownership environment where the individual contributor and strategic planning roles overlap

Required Education:

• Strong academic record and a BA/BS degree with high mathematical and computing content (e.g. Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Financial Engineering or relevant field)

An individual who loves solving deep and complex technical and business problems and wants to have an outsized impact with the services/ products they deliver. An individual with a passion for data technologies, high level of intellectual curiosity, a commitment to excellence and an unparalleled drive to deliver world-class services.

If you or anyone in your network would be interested in this opportunity, please send resume to Jerry Goldberg at jgoldberg@jharlan.com or directly contact us at (212) 792-0099

The firm is a global investment firm focused on distressed debt and private equity opportunities with $21B+ in Assets Under Management (AUM) and offices in the US, Europe, and Asia. They use a combination of sourcing, financial, and operational expertise to unlock value in complex situations.

The talent and dedication of their people is critical to their success. They offer an opportunity for developing one’s professional career while working with individuals trained in a variety of disciplines in a collegial and dynamic environment. They offer a broad range of competitive benefits on a global basis.

They seek candidates who are high-energy self-starters who want to join an investment management firm on the leading edge of the global markets. The management team needs individuals of the highest professional caliber who are leaders, problem solvers, analytic, detail-oriented, and entrepreneurial. Everyone at the firm works side-by-side with the firm’s senior management in a highly collaborative and charged environment.

Successful candidates are:

• Analytic and relentless in pursuit of the right answer
• Strong communicators who excel at rapid synthesis
• Able to demonstrate sound business judgment
• Able to digest complexity while maintaining an understanding of the “big picture” of business needs
• Team players who are energized by a collaborative enterprise

The firm’s employees maintain the highest professional and ethical standards. The firm has earned a reputation for honesty, fair dealing, and transparency in a competitive industry. They believe that these standards are the foundation for superior investment performance and are critical to delivering performance to clients