Senior Director - Data Governance Platforms

The Senior Director - Data Governance Platforms leads 3Cloud’s Data Governance Platforms practice, shaping strategy, growth, market positioning, and performance. This role defines how 3Cloud helps clients create trusted, secure, discoverable, high-quality, and business-ready data foundations for analytics, Microsoft Copilot, and AI agents.

The role is accountable for building a differentiated Microsoft-aligned practice, creating demand, shaping strategic pursuits, developing senior client relationships, and enabling delivery at scale. The successful candidate combines commercial judgment, executive presence, and technical credibility across Microsoft Purview, Fabric and OneLake, Microsoft IQ, Foundry, Microsoft 365, Azure, Copilot Studio, and the broader data and AI ecosystem. This is not a hands-on engineering role, but requires the ability to challenge designs, frame tradeoffs, guide technical leaders, and connect platform choices to business value and risk.

Responsibilities

Practice Leadership and Strategy

• Own the practice vision, strategy, business plan, portfolio, operating model, investment roadmap, and performance metrics aligned to 3Cloud, Cognizant, Microsoft, and client priorities.

• Define market positioning, priority buyers, offerings, commercial models, differentiated value proposition, and collaboration boundaries across related data, AI, security, and industry teams.

• Translate Microsoft’s Frontier direction into a coherent portfolio for trusted data, governance modernization, Fabric and OneLake adoption, Copilot readiness, AI governance, agent control, and enterprise context.

• Build the leadership bench, reusable IP, partner ecosystem, and delivery capability required to scale the practice profitably.

Go-to-Market and Growth

• Own go-to-market planning and demand creation with account teams, Microsoft, Cognizant, alliances, marketing, and industry leaders.

• Develop compelling plays, offers, campaigns, executive narratives, discovery methods, proof-of-value motions, and repeatable sales and solutioning assets.

• Originate, qualify, and shape strategic opportunities with C-suite and senior data, AI, security, privacy, risk, compliance, and technology stakeholders.

• Lead executive workshops and pursuit strategy, aligning outcomes, scope, solution direction, funding, commercial approach, delivery model, risks, and next steps.

Executive and Technical Advisory

• Serve as a trusted advisor, connecting business strategy, regulatory obligations, risk appetite, operating model, architecture, platform choices, and transformation sequencing.

• Advise on governance across Microsoft Purview, Fabric and OneLake, Microsoft IQ, Foundry, Microsoft 365 and Graph, Copilot Studio, Azure, and heterogeneous enterprise estates.

• Guide unified governance control planes spanning identity, metadata, cataloging, policy, classification, protection, quality, lineage, observability, evaluation, audit, and runtime enforcement.

• Advise on trusted business context through metadata, master/reference data, data quality, glossaries, semantic models, ontologies, knowledge graphs, authoritative metrics, and provenance.

• Guide AI and agent governance across models, copilots, prompts, tools, actions, memory, knowledge sources, identity, permissions, oversight, evaluation, audit, and lifecycle controls.

• Translate complex technical decisions into clear executive choices, including value, cost, risk, speed, dependencies, operating implications, and consequences of inaction.

Practice Enablement, Delivery, and Innovation

• Develop leaders and employees, setting expectations for market contribution, advisory quality, technical credibility, delivery excellence, and reusable IP.

• Own workforce strategy, succession, hiring profiles, certifications, communities of practice, and access to global and partner capabilities.

• Establish practical solution and delivery governance for architecture assurance, commercial discipline, quality gates, escalation, risk visibility, and benefits realization.

• Sponsor strategic engagements, coach leaders, resolve material client or solution risks, and convert lessons learned into improved offerings and methods.

• Maintain a forward-looking view of Microsoft and industry developments, sponsoring incubations and ecosystem partnerships that become repeatable market offerings.

Requirements

• 15+ years in data, analytics, cloud, security, AI, or enterprise transformation, including senior consulting, professional services, or technology practice leadership.

• Proven ability to build and scale a consulting practice or major capability, with accountability for strategy, offerings, pipeline, revenue, margin, talent, partnerships, and client outcomes.

• Demonstrated success originating, qualifying, shaping, and winning complex data and AI transformation opportunities with C-suite and senior executives.

• Executive-level credibility across data governance, metadata, catalog, lineage, quality, MDM, privacy, security, compliance, data products, semantic context, ontologies, and responsible AI.

• Ability to advise on Microsoft Purview, Fabric and OneLake, Microsoft IQ, Foundry, Microsoft 365 and Graph, Copilot Studio, Azure data and AI services, Entra, Defender, Sentinel, and relevant partner platforms.

• Credibility advising on AI and agent governance, including grounding, lifecycle controls, identity, permissions, actions, memory, oversight, evaluation, observability, audit, and incident response.

• Architecture depth to challenge designs, identify risks, frame platform tradeoffs, guide principal-level specialists, and explain technical choices to executive audiences.

• Strong commercial judgment across qualification, value engineering, estimation, contracting, staffing, delivery risk, margin, investment decisions, and benefits realization.

• Exceptional executive presence, facilitation, storytelling, written communication, structured problem solving, and ability to align business and technical stakeholders around action.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience required; advanced degree and relevant Microsoft, governance, security, privacy, cloud, or responsible AI certifications preferred.