Lead, Data Governance Remote - Americas at Alpaca

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure supporting stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, and 24/5 trading. As a licensed financial services company, we serve hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries, including broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, managing over 10 million brokerage accounts. Our global team is composed of diverse, experienced professionals committed to making financial services accessible to everyone. We are dedicated to open-source contributions and continuously improving our developer-friendly API and robust infrastructure. Alpaca has secured $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors.

Our Team

We are a dynamic team of over 400 globally distributed members working from various locations worldwide, including the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond. We seek passionate individuals who align with our core values - Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable - to contribute to our rapid growth.

Your Role: Lead, Data Governance

As the Lead, Data Governance, you will be instrumental in building and operating Alpaca's data governance and data security program across our lakehouse, analytics tools, and internal data products. Your responsibilities include establishing standards for data classification, access control, and protection, collaborating closely with Data Engineering and Data Science to implement these standards.

Given the rapid growth of our data environment, which handles extensive cross-region data across the US, Japan, EU, and other markets, we need someone to ensure access controls keep pace with partner and regulatory expectations.

This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports. You will report to the Chief Information & Security Officer (CISO) and work closely with Data Engineering and Data Science through a dotted line.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and maintain data governance policies, classification standards, ownership models, and exception processes in adherence with Security and Privacy requirements.
• Own data access governance for the lakehouse and analytics stack, including setting entitlement standards, conducting periodic access reviews, and ensuring least-privilege access across tools like Trino, Ranger, Cube, and Metabase.
• Partner with Data Engineering on the technical implementation of controls, such as Ranger policies, schema restrictions, and service account management.
• Establish data quality standards and assist Data teams in tracking and improving against them.
• Maintain current documentation for our data inventory, metadata, and lineage to support compliance and auditing.
• Review data-related vendors and new use cases (e.g., analytics platforms, reverse ETL, AI query tools, notebooks) alongside Security, Privacy, and Legal teams.
• Support sensitive and cross-border data requests, managing PII handling and regional data flows for Engineering, Operations, and New Markets.
• Prepare necessary evidence for audits such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, CSA STAR, and partner security reviews, as well as regulatory exams.
• Track data risks and control gaps as part of the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program.
• Act as the primary governance partner for Data and Security concerning access, classification, and tooling questions.
• Help define governance guardrails as we expand the use of corporate data in AI and agentic analytics workflows.

What You Bring (Must-Haves)

• 5+ years of experience in data governance, data security, GRC, privacy engineering, or a related field.
• A minimum of 2 years working with modern data platforms, including lakehouses/warehouses, SQL engines, BI tools, and semantic layers.
• A strong understanding of data governance frameworks (DAMA-DMBOK, NIST, or similar) and proven ability to apply them in a fast moving company.
• Demonstrable experience building or managing data classification, access control, or entitlement review programs, beyond just writing policy documents.
• Familiarity with cloud data platforms (Google Cloud Platform experience is a plus) and standard analytics tooling.
• Working knowledge of privacy and regulatory requirements within financial services (including GDPR, CCPA, cross-border transfers, etc.).
• Experience supporting SOC 2, ISO 27001, or equivalent audits.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with engineering teams while championing necessary controls without becoming a bottleneck.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Must be organized, detail oriented, and thrive in a fast paced remote environment.
• Comfortable operating as an Individual Contributor with no direct reports.

Nice to Haves (Bonus Points)

• Background in Fintech, brokerage, or regulated financial services.
• Hands-on experience with Trino, Apache Ranger, dbt, Cube, Metabase, Airflow, or Iceberg.
• Experience reviewing AI/ML and analytics tools.
• Experience in privacy program development or Vendor/DPA reviews.
• Relevant certifications such as CIPT, CIPM, CISM, CISSP, CDMP, CRISC.
• Prior experience being the first governance hire at a growing company.
• Experience managing data residency and cross-border data issues related to Japan or the EU.
• Exposure to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) or operational risk.
• Experience working within a remote or distributed team structure.

What We Offer

• Competitive Salary and Stock Options.
• Comprehensive Health Benefits.
• New Hire Home Office Setup: A one-time stipend of USD $500.
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 via a Brex Card.

Alpaca is committed to being an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to building and hiring a diverse workforce. We encourage you to apply if you are ready to make a significant impact!