Cyber & Data Governance Lead

Cyber & Data Governance Lead

East Midlands | £60,000-£80,000 (Dependent on Experience) + Bonus & Benefits
Data Governance | Data Security | Data Risk | Data Insight

Commutable from Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, West Midlands

A growing, data-driven organisation is seeking to appoint a Cyber & Data Governance Lead to take ownership of its data governance framework, security control environment and third-party data risk oversight.

This is a new, senior and highly visible role operating across Technology, Risk, Compliance and Commercial teams, ensuring that large volumes of sensitive customer and commercial data are governed responsibly, protected appropriately and used effectively to support the organisation's continued growth.

The organisation operates in a highly data-centric environment where millions of customer and prospect records support commercial decision-making, customer engagement and business development activities. As such, the role sits at the intersection of data governance, security, and commercial data enablement.

The Opportunity

This role offers genuine ownership rather than incremental responsibility.

The Cyber & Data Governance Lead will act as the organisation's subject matter authority on data governance and data security controls, strengthening the frameworks and safeguards that underpin the safe management of information across the business.

Alongside the defensive aspects of data governance and security, the role will also contribute to ensuring that the organisation's data assets are structured, reliable and usable for commercial insight, analytics and decision-making.

You will therefore work closely with both technical teams and commercial stakeholders, ensuring that data governance supports not only regulatory and security requirements but also high-quality business intelligence, segmentation and analytical insight.

This is an ideal opportunity for someone who enjoys working at the intersection of governance, risk and commercial data strategy, and who wants to shape how a growing organisation manages and leverages its data assets.

Key Responsibilities

You will be responsible for strengthening the organisation's approach to both defensive and offensive data strategy.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Leading and enhancing the organisation's data governance framework, policies and standards
  * Strengthening data security controls across systems, platforms and datasets
  * Implementing governance around identity and access management, encryption, retention and data lifecycle management
  * Overseeing third-party and supplier data risk, including due diligence and governance of external datasets
  * Ensuring high levels of data integrity, quality and consistency across large datasets
  * Supporting remediation initiatives relating to data security, cyber risk and governance gaps
  * Providing structured reporting on data risk exposure and governance maturity to senior stakeholders
  * Working with Technology, Compliance and Commercial teams to ensure data is governed responsibly while remaining commercially useful

In addition, the role will help ensure that governance practices support the organisation's ability to derive meaningful insights from data, including:

• improving the reliability of datasets used for business intelligence and analytics
  * ensuring high-quality data inputs for reporting, segmentation and commercial insight
  * supporting initiatives that enable the organisation to use its data more effectively for customer engagement and decision-making

Candidate Profile

We are seeking a pragmatic and intellectually curious data professional who combines strong governance discipline with an appreciation for how organisations derive value from their data.

You will likely bring experience in areas such as:

• data governance frameworks and implementation
  * information security or data security controls
  * information or data risk management
  * data protection and regulatory governance
  * third-party or supplier data assurance
  * data quality, lifecycle and integrity management

Importantly, you will also understand how well-governed data enables organisations to generate commercial insight through analytics, reporting or business intelligence platforms.

Sector Background

Candidates may come from organisations that manage large and commercially valuable datasets, including sectors such as:

• financial services or lending
  * insurance and insurtech
  * telecommunications
  * e-commerce or retail platforms
  * SaaS and technology companies
  * marketing data or information services organisations
  * other data-rich B2B or B2C businesses

The most important factor is experience working within environments where data governance, security and data-driven decision-making are all critical.

Experience Required

You will likely have experience working with large-scale customer or commercial datasets and strengthening governance controls across data environments.

You should be comfortable:

• working across both technical and commercial teams
  * translating technical risk issues into clear business implications
  * driving implementation of governance decisions in practice

Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, ISO27001 or data governance certifications would be advantageous but are not essential.

Why Apply

This role offers the opportunity to shape and strengthen an organisation's data governance and security framework while also helping enable more effective commercial use of data.

The successful candidate will join a commercially ambitious and growing business where data plays a central role in customer engagement, insight generation and future innovation.

Salary £60,000-£80,000 (dependent on experience) plus performance bonus and benefits.