Chief Data Officer
Owns the data as an asset: the definitions, the governance, the quality, and who is allowed to see what.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
Distinct from a Director of Data, which is a platform job. The CDO exists when data is regulated, sold, or relied on by someone outside the company — a bank, an insurer, a health business, anyone whose data is the product. If your data problem is "two dashboards disagree", hire the director, not the chief.
Education
Quantitative or information-management background. In regulated industries, audit and privacy literacy outrank modelling skill.
Experience
10+ years including one governance regime stood up and one data incident handled. Ask who owned a definition when two departments disagreed, and how it was settled.
Vertical / domain experience
Regulatory domain is decisive — health, finance, telecom and cross-border personal data each have their own obligations and their own inspectors.
What it pays, roughly
$106,080 median, Canada — for Mathematicians, statisticians, actuaries and data scientists, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $95,992 to $106,080 over 27,545 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters |
|---|---|---|
| CDMP — Certified Data Management Professional | DAMA International | The governance credential, and the most relevant one for this seat. |
| CIPM / CIPP — privacy management and law | International Association of Privacy Professionals | Directly applicable: this role usually owns residency, retention and consent. |
| CISA — Certified Information Systems Auditor | ISACA | Reads as credible to the people who audit your controls. |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
Nobody. Instrument the product and keep the numbers somewhere one person maintains.
A data-literate engineer. Governance at this stage is a page of definitions, not a function.
A seat only if data is regulated or sold; otherwise the Director of Data and the CIO cover it.
Who it sits beside
A specialist seat is defined as much by the seats around it as by its own work — which hat it reports through, which one asks the adjacent question, and which one it must stay independent of.
Overlaps the CIO on systems and the Chief AI Officer on what models may be trained on. The boundary worth writing down: the CDO owns the definitions and the permissions, the CAIO owns what is built with them.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
- Director of Data (Technology)
- Chief Information Officer
CDO and Director of Data are one person below Series B, and the title that matters is the one on the governance documents.
Keep separate from
Separate the person who governs data use from the person whose results depend on using it.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Starts with who can see what
- Can produce a data inventory on request
- Has said no to a use of data
Red flags
- Buys a catalogue before writing definitions
- No view on retention
- Treats privacy as legal’s problem
What this role runs on
The software categories this seat lives in, each linked to the screen of who sells it — the incumbent, the challengers and what the lock-in is.