Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive.
At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
What's the role?
As the Metadata Governance Lead, you will shape the approach and roadmap for all things metadata-related to deliver on our ambitions of painless data governance and discoverability.
You will design and implement governance models that are relevant, rigorous & low friction as Xero grows the scale and maturity of its analytical use cases.
We believe deeply in building data pipelines and products that are scalable in every sense and we know that good metadata practices are key to achieving this. You'll build partnerships across the Data team and with key stakeholders in Legal, Risk and Security to define pragmatic frameworks to collect and use business, operational and technical metadata to accelerate our data-driven growth ambitions.
Who are the team?
The Data team is responsible for driving the adoption of data driven decision making across Xero - for both our internal users and our global audience of small business owners, bookkeepers and accountants.
We create, manage and deliver a wide range of data services including core reporting, key data dimensions, extensible and scalable analytical data processing and storage facilities, machine learning toolsets, frameworks and API driven prediction services.
We are the center of expertise for data architecture, data modeling, machine learning, ethical data usage and artificial intelligence service design. We lead the effort to raise the data and AI literacy levels across Xero.
What you'll be doing...
Evolve our data governance and data usage principles, processes and tools to keep pace with the ever changing nature of our business, the markets we operate in and our analytical use cases across the spectrum from Business Insights to Machine Learning
Define the use cases for data discoverability and governance at our current maturity levels and as we continue to scale
Define, own and implement the roadmap for governance that is relevant, rigorous, and painless, working in partnership with the Data team and specialists across Legal, Risk, Security, Product and Customer to test and refine the effectiveness of governance implementation steps
Continually measure and evolve the roadmaps for automating governance to ensure they are meeting our goals of governance being relevant, rigorous and painless
In partnership with other specialist Data teams, create a cohesive approach to automated and scalable metadata management to support significant questions of ethics, transparency and regulatory compliance as we continue to scale
In partnership with other specialist Data teams, design and implement approaches to using metadata in key applications such as Data Quality, Data Lineage and Business Glossary/Catalogue
In partnership with other specialist Data teams, select appropriate tooling to support metadata for identified use cases, including consideration of vendor options, open source and home grown solutions to meet our current and growing needs
Work with our Legal and Security teams to maintain a relevant and coherent action plan in the event of a data breach or other data related issue in the public domain
About you...
Deep understanding of the relationships between data architecture, data management, data quality and data accessibility/discoverability
Excellent written communication skills
Taking a product-thinking approach to policies, processes and standards so they remain valid and valuable for all
Consulting skills around shaping the problem space, structured thinking and analysis, communications and influence
Strong personal credibility and leadership skills
Successfully builds trust with stakeholders and working relationships across the business
Drives engagement, education and delivers sustainable change
Takes #ownership of problems and executes a pragmatic and collaborative approach to their resolution
What you'll bring with you...
Data governance and data management experience, preferably in both DW/BI and analytical and machine learning domains
Hands on experience in modern, web-scale information management and metadata automation approaches and tooling
Ability to influence change in dynamic, complex environments with multiple competing priorities
Creating effective roadmaps that enable ongoing realisation of value, whilst making investments for the longer term
Working within multi-jurisdiction regulatory environments
Leading senior leaders through difficult tradeoff discussions and creatively driving consensus
Familiarity with relevant regulatory and certification frameworks including GDPR, CCPA, ISO 27001/SOC2, and Open data (UK/ Australia)
By joining Xero you'll be working in a rapidly growing global company that is making life better for people in small business, their advisors and communities around the world. We believe in inspiring people to do the best work of their lives, if you do too then apply!
Xero is an NZ Immigration Accredited Employer and Rainbow Tick certified too.
Please include a cover letter in your application, telling us why you're a great fit for this position.
