Director, Data Quality and AI Operations

About the Role

As Director of Data Quality and AI Operations, based in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, you will play a pivotal role within the Chief Data and AI Office at a leading financial services client. This position supports enterprise-level frameworks to ensure trusted data and responsible AI use. You will lead the execution of assurance activities related to Data Quality and Responsible AI across diverse data and AI products. Collaborating with business units, technology teams, risk, legal, compliance, and governance groups, you will help operationalize data and AI standards into practical assurance mechanisms.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the delivery of assurance processes for Data Quality and Responsible AI controls across prioritized data assets, AI products, models, and enterprise assurance frameworks.
• Develop and execute practical assurance procedures, including test scripts, control checks, documentation standards, and evidence requirements from data and AI policies.
• Manage data quality evaluations covering completeness, accuracy, timeliness, consistency, validity, lineage, metadata, and suitability for use.
• Oversee Responsible AI assurance throughout AI lifecycle phases such as intake, risk categorization, pre-deployment reviews, monitoring, periodic reassessments, and change governance.
• Assess AI and data product evidence to verify compliance with standards like data source approvals, control documentation, explainability, monitoring thresholds, exception handling, and remediation plans.
• Create and maintain dashboards, scorecards, and KPI/KRI reports providing enterprise-wide visibility into AI solution ownership, risk levels, lifecycle stages, control coverage, exceptions, and remediation progress.
• Coordinate issue triage, severity evaluation, root cause analysis, remediation tracking, SLA monitoring, and closure documentation for Data Quality and Responsible AI findings.
• Collaborate with product owners, data domain experts, MLOps, DataOps, model risk managers, legal, compliance, privacy, information security, and audit teams to embed assurance into development workflows.
• Support pilot initiatives and scaling efforts for integrated Data Quality and AI assurance capabilities including automated rule execution, monitoring, exception workflows, and reusable playbooks.
• Prepare governance materials, management reports, and audit-ready documents for working groups, leadership bodies, control partners, and senior stakeholders.
• Identify and implement automation opportunities for control testing, evidence gathering, alert monitoring, dashboard construction, and translating policies into executable rules on enterprise platforms.
• Provide leadership, coaching, and quality oversight to analysts, specialists, and global partners involved in Data Quality and AI assurance, including teams in India.

Candidate Profile

• Extensive experience in data quality, governance, AI governance, model risk, technology risk, audit, compliance, analytics, or data engineering, preferably in large global or regulated environments.
• Deep understanding of risk-focused data quality management including critical data elements prioritization, control implementation, monitoring, issue resolution, lineage, metadata management, and fit-for-use determination.
• Solid knowledge of Responsible AI principles such as risk tiering, fairness, explainability, transparency, robustness, privacy, human oversight, model drift, bias detection, and lifecycle governance.
• Proven ability to design and implement assurance and control testing procedures emphasizing risk, materiality, regulatory requirements, and business impact.
• Skilled at translating policies, standards, and controls into practical procedures, testing routines, reporting mechanisms, escalation protocols, and operational guides.
• Hands-on experience with dashboarding and reporting solutions including Power BI, Tableau, Grafana, Streamlit, or Dash.
• Familiarity with data governance and quality platforms like Ataccama, Collibra, Informatica, Denodo, ServiceNow, Jira, or equivalent tools.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with the capability to generate clear governance documents, executive summaries, detailed test evidence, and issue reports.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, able to align cross-functional teams in risk decisions, ownership, and remediation activities.
• Experience leading projects within matrix organizations, managing competing priorities, and delivering results with discipline and precision.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, Business Analytics or related fields; advanced degrees preferred.

Desirable Qualifications

• Experience within financial services, insurance, asset management, banking, or other highly regulated sectors.
• Background in managing global teams, particularly coordinating across US and India time zones.
• Knowledge of governance frameworks such as NIST AI Risk Management Framework, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO/IEC AI standards, DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM, or other technology risk frameworks.
• Exposure to AI/ML development practices, MLOps, large language models, model validation, monitoring, or retrieval-augmented generation techniques.
• Hands-on skills with SQL, Python, R, data profiling, data observability, automation in testing, or analytics engineering.
• Relevant certifications like CDMP, DGSP, CISA, CRISC, ISO, cloud data, AI governance, or risk and compliance accreditations.

Rewards & Benefits

The role offers a competitive salary package including pension, healthcare, life assurance, laptop provision, and access to extensive training options along with discounts across the Tata network. Health and wellness initiatives, sports events, sponsorships like the London Marathon, and community partnerships in Ireland form part of the benefits.

Diversity and Inclusion

The organization is committed to equality and inclusivity, supporting individuals across race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, neurodiversity, gender identity, age, physical ability, gender reassignment, and sexual orientation. It is a disability-inclusive employer offering interview opportunities to candidates with disabilities who meet minimum criteria. Applicants may request accommodations at any stage of the recruitment process.

Additional Information

If you require assistance completing the application or need alternative document formats, contact the recruitment team via email with appropriate subject lines. Beware of fraudulent offers; the employer does not request payments or deposits and does not send offers from free email services. Fraudulent recruitment activities should be reported immediately. Due to application volume, individual status updates are not provided; applicants should consider lack of response after 30 days as unsuccessful.