Role overview

WHOOP is a data-driven company focused on unlocking performance through deeper personal insights. As the Director of Data Governance, you will establish and lead data governance as a new strategic pillar within the Data, Analytics & AI organization, reporting to the VP of Data, Analytics and AI Acceleration. This foundational role involves designing the governance framework, policies, and standards that enable WHOOP to scale responsibly into regulated healthcare environments while maintaining data trustworthiness across the organization.

Key responsibilities

Define and execute the data governance strategy, operating model, and roadmap covering data ownership, contracts, event taxonomy, cataloging, access policies, data quality standards, and privacy compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA).
Build and lead a senior team while developing coaching capabilities and collaborating closely with technical leaders across the organization.
Establish a formal data ownership model that assigns stewardship and accountability for critical datasets in partnership with engineering and business stakeholders.
Set standards for data contracts between teams, including schema stability, service level agreements, and breaking-change management, with implementation supported by the Data Platform & Engineering team.
Govern the event taxonomy framework to standardize how product and engineering teams define, name, and instrument events across platforms.
Define data quality standards for freshness and validation, establish incident response expectations, and champion automated testing and anomaly detection capabilities.
Partner with legal, compliance, and security teams to define privacy and healthcare compliance standards, then work with the platform team to implement them technically.
Design role-based access policies that balance security with self-service usability and embed governance directly into engineering workflows to make compliance the default path.

Requirements

Ten or more years of experience in data, engineering, or data governance roles, with strong expertise in data governance, data quality, data engineering, or data platforms.
Four or more years of demonstrated experience building and leading teams.
Direct experience designing and implementing data governance programs or frameworks, particularly in high-growth environments where governance infrastructure was not yet established.
Hands-on proficiency with modern data stack tools including Snowflake, dbt, Airflow or similar orchestration platforms, and data catalog or lineage tools.
Knowledge of healthcare data regulations (HIPAA) or the ability to develop deep expertise rapidly as WHOOP expands into regulated healthcare products.
Experience implementing data quality frameworks with automated monitoring and alerting systems.
Expertise in access control design and administration for cloud data platforms, including role-based access control, row-level security, and dynamic data masking in Snowflake environments.
Proven ability to drive cross-functional alignment on data standards and lead complex initiatives involving engineering, product, and business teams.
Track record of managing data oversight for regulated research, including IRB-regulated studies or FDA regulatory filings.
Strong executive communication skills and ability to translate technical governance concepts into business value for non-technical stakeholders.
Player-coach mindset balancing hands-on execution with the ability to build repeatable processes and grow a team.
Commitment to leveraging AI tools effectively while maintaining quality standards.

What makes this role worth considering

This is a founding leadership opportunity where you will establish governance as a new strategic pillar within a mature data organization at a high-growth company. You will work across technical and business functions at scale, influencing how data is managed across the entire organization while building a senior team. The role combines strategic vision-setting with hands-on technical work in a healthcare-focused company that is rapidly expanding into regulated environments.