Associate Director, Data Governance, FAIR, and AI-Readiness

Job Title: Associate Director, Data Governance, FAIR, and AI-Readiness

Job Location: Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States

Job Location Type: Remote

Job Contract Type: Full-time

Job Seniority Level:

Join Amgen’s Mission of Serving Patients

At Amgen, if you feel like you’re part of something bigger, it’s because you are. Our shared mission—to serve patients living with serious illnesses—drives all that we do.

Since 1980, we’ve helped pioneer the world of biotech in our fight against the world’s toughest diseases. With our focus on four therapeutic areas –Oncology, Inflammation, General Medicine, and Rare Disease– we reach millions of patients each year. Amgen is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of medicines to treat cancer, heart disease, inflammatory conditions, rare diseases, and obesity and obesity-related conditions. As a member of the Amgen team, you’ll help make a lasting impact on the lives of patients as we research, manufacture, and deliver innovative medicines to help people live longer, fuller happier lives.

Our award-winning culture is collaborative, innovative, and science based. If you have a passion for challenges and the opportunities that lay within them, you’ll thrive as part of the Amgen team. Join us and transform the lives of patients while transforming your career.

Associate Director, Data Governance, FAIR, and AI-Readiness

What you will do

Let’s do this. Let’s change the world. In this vital role you will advance Enterprise Data Governance, FAIR data practices, and a data product operating model that makes trusted, reusable, and responsibly accessible data available for analytics, automation, and AI innovation.

The successful candidate will lead cross-functional data strategy and delivery across data domains, translating scientific and business priorities into scalable governance, metadata, quality, semantic interoperability, and data product capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the enterprise Data Governance, FAIR, and data product strategy and roadmap, aligning investments to scientific and business priorities.
• Establish a value-realization framework to measure business outcomes, adoption, and return on investment from data initiatives.
• Execute the Enterprise Data Strategy, including data ownership, reusable data products, lifecycle management, data contracts, and adoption measures.
• Evolve a federated governance operating model with clear decision rights, data ownership, stewardship accountabilities, data councils, data standards, and escalation paths.
• Evolve FAIR maturity across the enterprise, including embedding FAIR practices in the data lifecycle, metadata standards, persistent identifiers, controlled vocabularies, and access patterns.
• Advance active metadata, data catalog, lineage, business glossary, semantic and knowledge graph capabilities to improve discovery, context, interoperability, and trust.
• Set governance policies and controls for data quality, observability, privacy, security, retention, and responsible use; ensure fit-for-purpose data for regulated and AI-enabled use cases.
• Partner with Data Architecture, Data Engineering, Digital, Security, Privacy, Legal, and business teams to operationalize governed data products across platforms and domains.
• Enable responsible AI by defining and enforcing data readiness criteria.
• Serve as the data engagement lead for an assigned business function, driving adoption of data management practices, including FAIR, to deliver measurable data improvements and business value.
• Manage large-scale data programs, cross-functional initiatives, and external partners; communicate outcomes, risks, dependencies, and value realization to senior leadership.

What we expect of you

We are all different, yet we all use our unique contributions to serve patients. The professional we seek is adata management leader with biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry experience with these qualifications.

Basic Qualifications

Doctorate degree and 2 years of Data Management, Information Systems, or related experience

OR

Master’s degree and 6 years of Data Management, Information Systems, or related experience

OR

Bachelor’s degree and 8 years of Data Management, Information Systems, or related experience

OR

Associate degree and 10 years of Data Management, Information Systems, or related experience

Mandatory Skills and Qualifications

• Experience in the biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry, with an understanding of regulated data, business processes, and compliance requirements.
• Demonstrated leadership of enterprise data governance, data management, active metadata, data quality, or data product initiatives across business and technology teams.
• Hands-on understanding of FAIR data principles and their practical application through active metadata, standards, semantics, interoperability, and access controls.
• Experience establishing data governance operating models, including data ownership, stewardship, policy, standards, controls, and issue management.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to translate complex data topics into business value and decisions.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Experience implementing enterprise data strategy, scaling FAIR, data products operating model, and data contracts.
• Knowledge of modern data management capabilities, including active metadata, data observability, lineage, ontologies, knowledge graphs, and policy-as-code.
• Experience with master data, data catalog, governance, quality, active metadata, and semantic technologies: Collibra, Databricks Unity Catalog, Reltio, SciBite, or TopQuadrant.
• Experience enabling responsible AI, including data readiness for machine learning, generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, and AI agent use cases.
• Ability to define measurable outcomes for data investments, including data product adoption, quality, time-to-discovery, reuse, compliance, and AI readiness.
• Experience managing external partners and geographically distributed delivery teams in complex stakeholder environments.

What you can expect of us

As we work to develop treatments that take care of others, we also work to care for your professional and personal growth and well-being. From our competitive benefits to our collaborative culture, we’ll support your journey every step of the way.

The expected annual salary range for this role in the U.S. (excluding Puerto Rico) is posted. Actual salary will vary based on several factors including but not limited to, relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.

In addition to the base salary, Amgen offers a Total Rewards Plan, based on eligibility, comprising of health and welfare plans for staff and eligible dependents, financial plans with opportunities to save towards retirement or other goals, work/life balance, and career development opportunities that may include:

• A comprehensive employee benefits package, including a Retirement and Savings Plan with generous company contributions, group medical, dental and vision coverage, life and disability insurance, and flexible spending accounts
• A discretionary annual bonus program, or for field sales representatives, a sales-based incentive plan
• Stock-based long-term incentives
• Award-winning time-off plans
• Flexible work models where possible. Refer to the Work Location Type in the job posting to see if this applies.

Apply now and make a lasting impact with the Amgen team.

careers.amgen.com

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Application deadline

Amgen does not have an application deadline for this position; we will continue accepting applications until we receive a sufficient number or select a candidate for the position.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship for this role is not guaranteed.

As an organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for people around the world, Amgen fosters an inclusive environment of diverse, ethical, committed and highly accomplished people who respect each other and live the Amgen values to continue advancing science to serve patients. Together, we compete in the fight against serious disease.

Amgen is an Equal Opportunity employer and will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

This job is curated by Lifelancer.

Lifelancer is a talent-hiring platform in Life Sciences, Pharma and IT. The platform connects talent with opportunities in pharma, biotech, health sciences, healthtech and IT domains.

Please apply via Lifelancer platform to get connected to the application page and to find similar roles.