Senior Director, Finance Data Products, Semantics and Stewardship

Music is Universal

It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.

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We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email [email protected].

Senior Director, Finance Data Products, Semantics & Stewardship

We are UMG, the Universal Music Group. We are the world’s leading music company. In everything we do, we are committed to artistry, innovation and entrepreneurship. We own and operate a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising, and audiovisual content in more than 60 countries. We identify and develop recording artists and songwriters, and we produce, distribute and promote the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music to delight and entertain fans around the world.

The Senior Director, Finance Data Products, Semantics & Stewardship will lead the Global Finance Data Management pillar of the Finance Intelligence Center of Excellence (FInCo). The role is Finance Data Product Owner and Finance Data Steward for Finance data semantics, critical data elements, stewardship, Master Data Management and Data Governance requirements, data-product priorities and fit-for-purpose acceptance. The role translates authoritative Finance policy and KPI definitions into reusable data requirements. Authoritative Finance owners remain the Business Narrative and Decision Owners and retain policy, business intent, interpretation and final decisions. The role partners with other stakeholder teams that own operational Data Quality, Management Reporting products, BI design/build, enterprise engineering or platform operations.

Job Duties:

- Finance data-product, semantic and stewardship strategy: Establish the global operating model for Finance data products, semantics and stewardship, including CDEs, owners, stewards, governance, decision rights, service levels and change controls.
- Finance semantic contract: Act as Data Steward for Finance definitions, KPIs, calculations, hierarchies, mappings, allocations, grain and reconciliation rules on behalf of authoritative Finance owners, who retain ownership of their data, definitions and business meaning. Finance owners decide on Finance data semantics - translate those decisions into governed requirements and coordinate implementation with Data and Technology partners. Finance Insights & Reporting may approve presentation-only extensions using approved semantics; changes to meaning, logic or grain require the relevant Finance owner's approval, coordinated through this role.
- Finance data-product ownership and access: As Finance Data Product Owner, define prioritized requirements, business rules, access needs and acceptance criteria for the enterprise data-product roadmap. Finance owners approve sensitive access.
- Finance Business Owner - Data Governance and MDM: Represent Finance through FInCo in enterprise MDM, Data Governance and Data Quality forums as CDO enables these capabilities across the enterprise. Own Finance requirements, priorities, roadmap input, adoption, acceptance and value for Data Governance and MDM capabilities used by FInCo; authoritative ownership of Finance data, KPI definitions and business meaning remain with the respective Finance owners. Partner with the FInCo Finance Data Quality pillar on DQ matters.
- Testing and acceptance: Lead data-product testing, data UAT and fit-for-purpose acceptance. Global Finance Data Quality supplies profiling, reconciliation and readiness evidence; Finance Insights & Reporting validates downstream usability.
- FInCo intake and data-discrepancy support: Operate one FInCo intake. Finance Insights & Reporting owns first-line report support; this role owns triage, severity and priority for semantic or data-product issues; Global Finance Data Quality investigates.
- GenAI and advanced-analytics data readiness: Ensure data, semantics, lineage, access and controls support human-reviewed GenAI and advanced analytics within Management Reporting. Finance Insights & Reporting is the Management Reporting Product Owner.
- Enterprise and Finance Transformation collaboration: Actively collaborate with data and technology teams across the CDO and CIO organizations, and with FTO teams on Finance Transformation priorities, dependencies and delivery.
- FInCo peer-pillar collaboration: Work closely with FInCo’s Finance Data Quality and Finance Insights & Reporting pillars to collectively deliver FInCo objectives, align priorities, resolve cross-pillar dependencies and deliver integrated outcomes.
- Global team and stakeholder leadership: Build a high-performing global team and engage Group, Regional and OpCo CFOs, Controllership, Shared Services, vendors and implementation partners.
- undefined

Must Have:

15+ years of progressive experience in Finance data management, business data stewardship, data products, information management, or Finance transformation, including significant leadership responsibility in a large global organization.

Deep understanding of Finance information concepts, including actuals, plans, forecasts, management reporting, hierarchies, mappings, allocations, reconciliations, controls, and performance measures, and demonstrated ability to translate them into semantic contracts, functional specifications, and acceptance criteria.

Strong fluency in data-product lifecycles, metadata, lineage, data quality, master and reference data, and cloud platforms; experience with Data Governance tools, GCP/BigQuery, ERP, EPM, and BI environments is highly valued.

Proven success influencing across Business, Finance, CDO, CIO/CTO, architecture, engineering, security, and transformation teams, with exceptional executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, and comfort engaging global and regional CFOs.

A demonstrated record of building high-performing global teams and durable capabilities; a bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Information Systems, Data Management, Computer Science, or a related field is required, with an MBA or advanced qualification and music, media, entertainment or consumer experience preferred.

Just So You Know…

The company presents this job description as a guide to the major areas and duties for which the jobholder is accountable. However, the business operates in an environment that demands change and the jobholder's specific responsibilities and activities will vary and develop. Therefore, the job description should be seen as indicative and not as a permanent, definitive, and exhaustive statement.

## Job Category:
Finance & Accounting