Data Governance Manager

Solaris is Europe’s leading embedded finance platform, pioneering Banking-as-a-Service to bridge the gap between financial technology and licensed banking. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Berlin, Solaris enables fintechs, digital ecosystems, and multinationals to embed accounts, cards, lending, and payments directly into their own products, creating seamless financial experiences for their users. As a fully licensed German bank, Solaris combines the highest standards of IT security and regulatory resilience with a modular, highly scalable infrastructure.

Today, Solaris is driving the next evolution of financial services by transitioning into an AI-native banking platform, ensuring European businesses can deploy secure, adaptable financial products at scale.

Why join Solaris?

• 🚀 We are fundamentally redesigning banking processes around AI orchestration, standardized modular building blocks, and embedded regulatory compliance.
• 🎯 We combine tech and banking in dedicated hubs - driving the technology infrastructure out of Berlin and banking operations out of Frankfurt.
• 💡 Through our internal mobility, growth opportunities, and the Solaris Academy, we offer continuous learning tracks, AI ambassador mentorship, and upskilling to keep your skills ahead of the curve.
• ⚖️ We foster a workplace rooted in integrity, proactive risk management, and equality actively driving initiatives like DEI initiatives.

Your Role

• Administer and own the company wide data catalog, including defining and maintaining regulatory data assets, updating the business glossary, and ensuring technical metadata from automated pipelines is correctly tagged and categorized.
• Develop automated end-to-end data lineage across  operational and analytical systems to ensure the bank knows exactly where critical data originates and where it lands.
• Further develop the company Data Governance Operating Model in compliance with BCBS 239, DORA and GDPR, by developing the policies and procedures for the business processes owned by the Data Department including managing and accessing the data by the users.
• Define and maintain ownership concept and for every data product, starting from data marts and dashboards up to data applications
• Define data owners and resolve conflicts based on data governance policies.
• Design company wide data contracts and translate them into detailed technical requirements
• Represent the department in internal and external audits ranging from ad-hoc data requests up to comprehensive documentation.
• Define, maintain and follow SLAs for the overall data platform and critical data elements.
• Further develop the data quality framework and design quality controls for critical data elements.

We'd love to see 

Depending on your level of experience, your responsibilities and scope of role will range. We don’t care much about fancy titles, but rather about real personal and professional development, as laid out in our learning framework. Let’s figure together out how you can contribute to our team.

• Degree in Data Management, Computer Science, Mathematics, (Business) Informatics or Finance and Economics.
• Minimum 8 years experience in a role of data governance professional in a fast pace environment and a regulated industry.
• Ability to take frameworks like BAIT, MaRisk, DORA, and the EU AI Act and turn them into concrete technical requirements.
• Define automated data controls, lineage and data quality metrics in a way that satisfies strict BaFin or Bundesbank auditors.
• Understanding principles like data minimization, anonymization/pseudonymization, and how to govern "Right to be Forgotten" requests across interconnected systems and the ability to translate them into technical concepts.
• Hands-on experience with modern cloud data governance tools (e.g., Atlan, Collibra, Snowflake Horizon). 
• Proficient SQL, data profiling  and template language (e.g. jinja) skills.
• Solid understanding of data management principles, including ETL/ELT, data-warehousing, version control (Git), CI/CD, and automated testing.
• Ability to work with a modern data stack and manage data governance artefacts as code (e.g. Snowflake, dbt, airflow, elementary).
• Excellent English language skills, and preferable German language skills
• Ability to persuade busy product teams and engineering leads to prioritize data governance and documentation, even when they are focused on shipping new features.
• Acting as an objective mediator when disputes arise over data ownership.
• The ability to simplify complex data concepts and train "Data Champions" across different business units, building an organic data culture.
• Strategic thinking and sense of business criticality and prioritisation. 
• Ability to mentor and inspire team members.
• Design "lean" governance workflows that protect the bank without slowing down innovation.
• Comfortable working with AI tools, thinking critically about AI outputs, and contributing to a culture of responsible AI use. We expect you to demonstrate comfort with AI-assisted workflows and a willingness to continuously develop their AI capabilities as the technology evolves.

Benefits 

• Home office budget.
• Learning & development budget of €1000 per year and a transparent growth framework to support your career goals.
• Competitive salary and a variable remuneration program.
• Monthly meal allowance.
• Deutschland ticket subsidy.
• 28 vacation days, increasing by 2 days after 2 years and 3 days after 3 years with Solaris.
• Opportunity to work abroad for up to 12 weeks per year.

While job ads usually paint an ideal picture of a candidate, studies show that most applicants meet an average of 60% of the criteria. Unfortunately, many promising candidates tend to apply only if they meet all the criteria. So if you think you have what it takes, but don't necessarily meet every single item in the job description, please contact us anyway. We'd love to talk with you and find out if you might be a good fit for us.

At Solaris, we are committed to nurturing an inclusive environment, where all Solarians feel valued, respected and supported. We are dedicated to building a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of our communities. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of color, ethnicity, religion, sex, origin, disability, marital status, citizenship, or gender identity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

Information on data processing:

DE: https://www.solarisgroup.com/gdpr_notice_de
EN: https://www.solarisgroup.com/gdpr_notice_en

The annual gross salary range for this position is: 70000 - 90000 EUR