Director, Data Governance & Observability

VERSANT is a leading force in news, sports and entertainment - home to iconic and trusted brands that inspire, inform, and delight audiences. Our unique combination of content, technology and services enriches the cultural fabric, igniting passions, sparking conversations, and connecting people to what they love most.
As an independent, publicly traded company, VERSANT brings together powerhouse cable networks - including USA Network, CNBC, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Golf Channel - with dynamic digital and direct-to-consumer brands such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. Together, these businesses reflect our commitment to delivering exceptional experiences across every screen and service.
VERSANT is an industry-changing media company fueled by innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit. With a strong foundation and a forward-looking vision, VERSANT empowers creativity, embraces change, and drives connection in an ever-evolving world.
Versant Media’s Data Platforms team is the central data store across the enterprise. We unify disparate systems into a secure, well-governed, real-time data environment that powers downstream products, analytics, and content delivery experiences.
We are seeking a Director, Data Governance & Observability to establish and operationalize data governance as a first-class platform capability. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can both design and implement governance mechanisms in code, while also setting standards, prioritizing work, and partnering across the organization.
This role will start as an individual contributor with leadership accountability, responsible for building the initial governance and observability foundations. Over time, the role is expected to grow into a people management position as scale and needs increase.
The Director, Data Governance & Observability reports to the VP of Data Platforms and works in close partnership with Platform Development, Data Products & Solutions, and SRE.
Responsibilities
Data Governance & Contracts
Define and enforce data contracts across platform services and data products, including schemas, expectations, ownership, and change management
Establish standards for data lineage, metadata, and semantic consistency
across the platform
Own definitions for data quality (freshness, completeness, correctness) and how those standards are validated
Partner with Platform Development to ensure governance requirements are embedded directly into pipelines, services, and APIs
Observability & Reliability (Data-Level)
Define data-level SLIs and SLOs in partnership with the SRE organization
Ensure contract violations, quality failures, and freshness issues are observable and actionable
Build and maintain platform-facing health and operational dashboards related to data services
Contribute to light executive-level reporting on platform health and data reliability (not business analytics)
Hands-On Platform Development
Write production code to implement governance and observability mechanisms (e.g., schema validation, contract enforcement, lineage capture)
Contribute to shared platform libraries, services, and tooling that make compliant behavior the default
Review designs and code to ensure governance considerations are addressed early
Cross-Functional Leadership
Partner closely with:Director, Platform Development on schemas, contracts, and platform enforcement patterns
Director, Data Products & Solutions on base dashboards, self-service enablement, and consumer-facing trust signals
SRE on alerting strategy, incident classification, and reliability standards
Help triage and prioritize governance-related intake and tradeoffs
Clearly communicate standards and expectations to engineering and non-engineering stakeholders
Team Growth (Future)
Hire and mentor data platform engineers focused on governance and quality as needs scale
Gradually transition toward more people leadership and strategic ownership over time
10+ years Strong hands-on experience building production data or platform systems
Deep understanding of data governance concepts, including contracts, lineage, metadata, and quality
Experience defining and enforcing standards through code and automation, not just documentation
Solid software engineering foundation, including:API and schema design
Modular or service-oriented architectures
Automated testing and CI/CD practices
Familiarity with observability concepts and working with SRE teams
Comfortable operating with high ownership in a lean, fast-moving environment
Strong collaborator who can work across platform, product, analytics, and operations teams
Nice to Have
Experience working in large-scale enterprise or media environments
Familiarity with lakehouse architectures and ELT pipelines
Exposure to analytics or BI tooling (e.g., Tableau, Power BI) from a platform or enablement perspective
Experience modernizing or governing legacy data systems in cloud-native environments
As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.
VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.