Data Governance Lead at Tamara: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Tamara, the first Saudi fintech company valued at $1 billion, is looking for a data governance lead at its Riyadh headquarters. The role is not engineering in the usual sense, and that is precisely what makes it notable: the company wants someone who makes its data inherently reliable and well-managed, not someone who builds a model.

Role:Data Governance Lead at Tamara, based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, full-time. Tamara is a buy-now-pay-later platform serving millions of users in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, working with brands such as Apple, SHEIN, Jarir, noon, IKEA and Amazon alongside small and medium-size enterprises, and is backed by the Sanabel Investment Fund, wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund, as well as SNB Capital and Checkout.com.

Primary challenge:Build a data governance framework for the company and operate and continuously improve it. That involves defining who owns each data set and who oversees it, establishing classification standards, lifecycle, retention, metadata management and business glossaries, monitoring data quality in terms of accuracy, completeness, consistency and safety, and creating ownership registers, data lineage maps and monitoring dashboards. The harder part is organizational rather than technical: preparing evidence and documentation for internal and external audits and regulatory inspections, leading governance assessments and control reviews, tracking gaps and following remediation plans until they are closed. All of this falls under the requirements of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), the Personal Data Protection Law, and the PCI DSS standard.

The posting adds another dimension: reviewing any project that uses, shares or adds a new analytics platform or integration, and objecting to it when necessary. This is the place for someone who says “no” within a fast-growing company, which explains why the posting describes the role as a partnership with engineering, security, privacy, compliance, risk and product simultaneously.

Key requirements:

• Two to five years in data governance, data management, data quality or compliance, preferably in fintech, banking or a regulated financial environment.
• Practical understanding of data ownership, oversight, metadata management, data lineage and lifecycle management.
• Clear familiarity with SAMA requirements, the Personal Data Protection Law and the PCI DSS standard.
• Strong analytical skills with proficiency in Excel, experience in SQL and reporting tools such as Power BI or Tableau.
• Proven ability to identify root causes of data-quality issues, define remediation actions and support audits.
• Exceptional stakeholder-management skills and the ability to influence cross-functional teams, and to write clear documentation for both technical and non-technical audiences.

The posting notes that professional certifications such as CDMP, DCAM, COBIT, CIPP or ISO 27001 are a plus, as is prior experience under SAMA supervision and hands-on work with governance, cataloguing, lineage tools and risk and compliance tools.

Salary:Not disclosed in the posting.

Practical step:The experience ceiling here is unusually low for a role that carries the title Lead, as two years is sufficient to apply. If you work in audit, compliance or data analysis within a bank or fintech, reshape your résumé around three items the posting explicitly requests: a case where you identified the root cause of a data-quality issue and resolved it, a governance document or policy you authored yourself, and direct participation in an audit or regulatory review. Those three weigh more in this role than a long list of tools.

Apply now: https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/tamara/jobs/4954552101