Role Overview

As the Director of Data & AI Governance, you will establish and lead enterprise-wide data management programs that ensure safe, compliant, high-quality data and AI. You will oversee Data Governance, AI Governance,  and Data + AI Stewardship, serving as the central authority on policies, forums, and controls across R&D, Lab Operations, Commercial, and SG&A domains. You will lead the Data & AI Governance Council through advocacy and a well thought data management strategy.

This role goes beyond policies into technical governance — it requires experience of how to build frameworks, deploy controls in code, and integrate governance into engineering delivery. The role spans all dimensions of governance, including: quality, privacy, security, agentic automation, AI risk management, bias/fairness testing, evals, and vendor AI evaluation. 

Key Responsibilities

Governance Council & Operating Model

• Define enterprise data management strategy and operating model and ensure that it is executed consistently across the enterprise.

• Chair and operationalize the AI & Data Governance Council, driving decision-making and accountability across legal, regulatory, compliance, IT, security, engineering, and product.

• Lead a federated stewardship model, ensuring business units own data while governance enforces consistency and compliance.

• Establish governance forums (steering committees, working groups, architecture boards) with clear outcomes.

Data Governance & Quality

• Build and drive adoption of 360° master/reference datasets (e.g., Case360, Patient 360, Provider 360, Billing 360) and ensure they are maintained as sources of truth for analytics and AI

• Partner with engineering teams to build interoperable standards that can be used to connect domain datasets to create longitudinal data products

• Define and enforce enterprise data governance policies, ensuring consistency in data definitions, lineage, and stewardship across all domains

• Build and manage enterprise data catalogs and metadata services to make data discoverable, trustworthy, and reusable across the organization.

• Establish and operate data quality frameworks with validation rules, anomaly detection, and automated testing to ensure accuracy, completeness, and timeliness.

• Embed data quality checks and lineage tracking directly into data and AI pipelines so that governance guardrails can be adopted without friction.

AI Policy Engineering & Implementation

• Develop AI use case risk management framework (RMF) to evaluate AI use cases from a governance, regulatory, medical, privacy, security, and risk standpoint

• Build and maintain an AI risk register and incident response plan for all AI use cases

• Develop governance policies (privacy, security, quality, fairness, integrity) aligned to HIPAA, CLIA, FDA, GDPR, and emerging AI regulations.

• Translate policies into technical implementations by embedding controls into:

  • ETL pipelines, feature stores, and model registries

  • CI/CD workflows for ML/GenAI models

  • Prompt orchestration and output logging for LLMs

  • Bias/fairness testing, drift detection, explainability dashboards

AI Risk & Automation

• Build and execute agentic automation processes and associated guardrails to enable business process automation

• Build documentation and process to ensure agent accountability through change history, audit logs, versioning etc.

• Track external regulatory trends and industry standards (e.g., NIST AI RMF, EU AI Act, FDA AI/ML guidance) 

AI Change Management & Vendor Governance

• Lead AI change management initiatives, including training programs, awareness campaigns, and a network of governance champions to drive adoption of best practices.

• Partner with Corporate Communications to cascade governance updates, AI guardrails, and usage guidelines across all levels of the organization.

• Develop and enforce vendor and third-party AI evaluation frameworks, assessing external AI tools for governance, data security, model risk, and compliance posture before integration.

• Track and manage vendor AI risks through standardized assessments, approvals, and monitoring processes.

Qualifications

Required:

• 15+ years in Data or AI governance with at least 7+ in leadership roles.

• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.

• Proven track record of building and leading enterprise-wide governance programs, councils, and stewardship networks that span both data governance (catalogs, lineage, quality) and AI/ML governance (model risk, bias/fairness, explainability, monitoring).

• Deep understanding of healthcare regulatory frameworks impacting AI: HIPAA, CLIA, FDA, GDPR, and regulations (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, Japan AI Promotion Act).

• Experience with LLM/GenAI governance implementation as per common regulatory frameworks: prompt logging, bias testing, guardrails, explainability.

• Experience in vendor AI/ML evaluation and governance, including due diligence of third-party AI/ML tools and platforms.

Preferred:

• Certifications in data governance, privacy, or risk management (DAMA CDMP, CIPP, CRISC)

• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in Computer Science, AI/ML, engineering or related field.

• Experience driving AI change management and building a culture of responsible AI adoption (training, awareness, champion networks).

• Proven experience embedding governance in code (pipelines, registries, CI/CD).

OUR OPPORTUNITY

Natera™ is a global leader in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) testing, dedicated to oncology, women’s health, and organ health. Our aim is to make personalized genetic testing and diagnostics part of the standard of care to protect health and enable earlier and more targeted interventions that lead to longer, healthier lives.

The Natera team consists of highly dedicated statisticians, geneticists, doctors, laboratory scientists, business professionals, software engineers and many other professionals from world-class institutions, who care deeply for our work and each other. When you join Natera, you’ll work hard and grow quickly. Working alongside the elite of the industry, you’ll be stretched and challenged, and take pride in being part of a company that is changing the landscape of genetic disease management.

WHAT WE OFFER

Competitive Benefits - Employee benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans for eligible employees and their dependents. Additionally, Natera employees and their immediate families receive free testing in addition to fertility care benefits. Other benefits include pregnancy and baby bonding leave, 401k benefits, commuter benefits and much more. We also offer a generous employee referral program!

For more information, visit www.natera.com.

Natera is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace environment, and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. Inclusive collaboration benefits our employees, our community and our patients, and is critical to our mission of changing the management of disease worldwide.

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply, and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.

If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents. 

Link: https://www.natera.com/notice-of-data-collection-california-residents/

Please be advised that Natera will reach out to candidates with a @natera.com email domain ONLY. Email communications from all other domain names are not from Natera or its employees and are fraudulent. Natera does not request interviews via text messages and does not ask for personal information until a candidate has engaged with the company and has spoken to a recruiter and the hiring team. Natera takes cyber crimes seriously, and will collaborate with law enforcement authorities to prosecute any related cyber crimes.

For more information:
- BBB announcement on job scams 
- FBI Cyber Crime resource page