Director of Data (P&C Insurance)

Sutton National Group, a rapidly growing national property and casualty insurance carrier group, seeks a Director of Data to own and drive the Company’s enterprise data strategy. This role is responsible for setting the vision, governance, and execution roadmap for all data flowing into the organization, with a primary

focus on premium and loss data managed within the Sutton Data Warehouse (“SDW”) built on Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Factory.

The Director of Data will lead the continuous development and maturation of Sutton’s data practice, establishing standards, processes, and capabilities that enable the business to trust, access, and act on its data. A key component of this role is advancing citizen development across the organization — empowering business users in underwriting, claims, finance, actuarial, and compliance to self-serve data needs through governed tooling and structured enablement programs.

This is a senior leadership role requiring a blend of technical depth in modern data platforms, strategic thinking, and the ability to build a high-performing data culture across a fast-growing insurance carrier.

Skills / knowledge / abilities

• Deep expertise in enterprise data strategy, data architecture, and data platform development within a complex, multi-source environment.
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Fabric (Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, Dataflows, Pipelines, Semantic Models) and Azure Data Factory (pipelines, linked services, triggers, data flows).
• Proficiency in SQL and experience with Python or PySpark for data engineering and transformation workloads.
• Strong understanding of P&C insurance data, including premium and loss data structures, regulatory reporting requirements, and program management workflows.
• Demonstrated experience building and leading data governance programs, including data quality, lineage, stewardship, and metadata management.
• Proven ability to design and implement citizen development programs that balance accessibility with governance and data integrity.
• Excellent leadership skills with experience building and developing data teams in a growth-stage organization.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills; able to translate data strategy into business value for executive and non-technical audiences.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving mindset with a focus on scalable, sustainable, and well-documented data solutions.
• Experience with PowerBI semantic model design, report governance, and enterprise deployment best practices.

Education and experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, or data management, with 5+ years in a senior or director-level data leadership role.
• Proven experience owning enterprise data warehousing or lakehouse platforms at scale, with hands-on expertise in Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Factory.
• 8+ years of experience in the Property & Casualty insurance industry, with deep familiarity with premium, loss, and program data.
• Demonstrated success defining and executing a data strategy that delivered measurable business impact across multiple departments.
• Experience building or leading citizen development or data self-service programs across a diverse business user base.
• Track record of establishing data governance frameworks and data quality programs in a regulated industry environment.
• Experience leading and developing high-performing data teams in a fast-paced, growth-oriented organization.

Compensation: This role is targeted at a range of $160,000-$175,000 base plus bonus. Actual compensation may vary based on candidate experience.

• Define, own, and execute the enterprise data strategy for Sutton National, aligning data initiatives with the Company’s growth objectives, regulatory requirements, and operational priorities.
• Establish and maintain data governance frameworks covering data ownership, stewardship, quality standards, metadata management, lineage documentation, and access controls.
• Serve as the executive sponsor for all data policy decisions, ensuring consistency and compliance across the organization’s data assets.
• Develop and maintain a prioritized data roadmap that reflects business needs across underwriting, claims, finance, actuarial, compliance, and program management.
• Define KPIs and metrics to measure data quality, platform performance, and adoption, reporting progress and strategic updates to executive leadership.

• Own the strategic design and ongoing development of the Sutton Data Warehouse (SDW) in Microsoft Fabric, ensuring it serves as the authoritative source of truth for premium and loss data across all programs and departments.
• Oversee the ingestion, transformation, and loading of premium and loss data from all program partners, carriers, and internal systems into the SDW via Azure Data Factory pipelines.
• Define and enforce data standards and business rules for premium and loss data entities, including policy, endorsement, cancellation, claims, and financial settlement data.
• Ensure premium and loss data is structured, validated, and available to support underwriting analysis, actuarial reserving, financial reporting, regulatory submissions, and program performance monitoring.
• Partner with finance, actuarial, and compliance teams to validate the accuracy and completeness of premium and loss data, driving resolution of discrepancies at the source.
• Maintain comprehensive data dictionaries, lineage maps, and documentation for all SDW datasets and data domains.

• Serve as the platform owner for Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Factory, overseeing architecture, configuration, capacity planning, security, and ongoing development.
• Lead the continuous improvement of ELT/ETL pipeline architecture in Azure Data Factory, driving efficiency, reliability, and scalability as data volumes and sources grow.
• Govern the Fabric workspace environment, including Lakehouse design, semantic model management, medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold), and data sharing configurations.
• Evaluate and adopt new Microsoft Fabric capabilities and Azure data services to enhance the platform as the product evolves.
• Partner with the Manager of Enterprise Applications to ensure application integration points feed clean, well-structured data into the SDW.
• Establish monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes for all data platform components to ensure high availability and data freshness.

• Build and mature Sutton National’s data practice, establishing repeatable frameworks, standards, and processes for data engineering, analytics, and reporting that scale with the organization.
• Lead a culture of continuous improvement across the data function, regularly reviewing and refining data workflows, tooling, and team capabilities.
• Define and implement data product management practices, ensuring data assets are treated as products with clear ownership, SLAs, and quality commitments.
• Drive the adoption of best practices in data modeling, documentation, testing, and version control across all data engineering work.
• Build and lead the data team, including data engineers, analytics engineers, and data analysts, setting clear expectations and supporting professional development.

• Design and lead Sutton National’s citizen development program, empowering business users across underwriting, claims, finance, actuarial, and compliance to build and consume data products within governed frameworks.
• Establish guardrails, training, and support structures that allow business teams to self-serve reporting and analytics in PowerBI and Microsoft Fabric without compromising data integrity or governance.
• Partner with department heads to identify citizen development opportunities, prioritizing use cases where empowered business users can accelerate insight delivery.
• Develop and deliver data literacy programs, training materials, and enablement resources that build confidence and competency across the organization.
• Define certification or tiering models for citizen developers to ensure appropriate access, accountability, and quality standards are maintained.
• Act as an internal champion for a data-driven culture, demonstrating the value of trusted, accessible data across all levels of the organization.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.