Example Job Description
Chief Data Officer
An executive data leader who establishes shared authority, architecture, stewardship, quality, access, and responsible use across the district’s information assets.
Interview Planning Resource
Possible Interview Q&A: Chief Data Officer
How to use this resource: Select questions that measure competencies established through the district’s current job analysis. Ask candidates the same predetermined questions under comparable conditions and evaluate responses against the same job-related criteria.
The indicators below describe evidence a strong response may contain; they are not required scripts or the only acceptable answers.
- How would you establish priorities and a practical annual work plan for enterprise data platforms, operational source systems, analytics, metadata, integration, and reporting services?
Strong response indicators: Connects district goals and user needs to risk, dependencies, capacity, owners, milestones, service measures, communication, and review rather than producing an unranked project list.
- Describe a time you found that a familiar process or report was producing unreliable results. How did you investigate and correct it?
Strong response indicators: Defines the expected result, traces evidence to authoritative sources, distinguishes symptoms from root causes, involves accountable owners, tests the correction, reconciles downstream effects, documents decisions, and monitors recurrence.
- You encounter a high-impact decision being made from conflicting or poorly governed data. What would you do first, and how would you manage the issue through resolution?
Strong response indicators: Protects people and continuity, establishes scope and authority, preserves evidence, engages the right owners, communicates proportionately, documents decisions, verifies recovery or correction, and completes a lessons-learned review.
- How would you work with cabinet leaders, program owners, data stewards, technology, privacy, security, researchers, educators, and community partners when they disagree about priorities or the acceptable level of risk?
Strong response indicators: Clarifies decision rights and shared purpose, surfaces evidence and constraints, distinguishes requirements from preferences, documents options and residual risk, facilitates a timely decision, and escalates through established authority when needed.
- What controls would you put in place before making a significant change to enterprise data platforms, operational source systems, analytics, metadata, integration, and reporting services?
Strong response indicators: Includes requirements, ownership, risk and privacy review, representative testing, accessibility where relevant, approvals, change communication, rollback or contingency, validation, monitoring, documentation, and support readiness.
- How would you decide what to automate and what should retain meaningful human review?
Strong response indicators: Selects stable, repeatable, testable work for automation; preserves human authority for exceptions and consequential judgments; addresses access, logging, bias or error, monitoring, failure recovery, documentation, and periodic reassessment.
- How would you explain a serious technical, instructional, operational, or data concern to a leader who does not work in your specialty?
Strong response indicators: States the affected people and services, evidence, uncertainty, consequence, deadline, accountable owners, options, recommendation, residual risk, and next update in plain language.
- What would you do when a request exceeds business ownership, privacy, cybersecurity, records authority, research approval, and executive decision rights?
Strong response indicators: Recognizes the limit, avoids unauthorized action, clarifies the legitimate need, preserves service where possible, routes the decision to the authorized owner, documents the handoff, and follows through without abandoning the requester.
- How would you protect confidential information while still providing useful service and appropriate access?
Strong response indicators: Applies purpose limitation, minimum necessary access, role-based permissions, secure transmission and storage, approved retention, understandable communication, auditability, timely removal, and incident escalation.
- How would you build staff capability so your office does not become the permanent fixer of every problem?
Strong response indicators: Uses clear ownership, role-based training, usable procedures, coaching, feedback loops, office hours, communities of practice, quality reports, cross-training, and measures whether source practices improve.
- What evidence would you use to determine whether your work is improving fitness for purpose, quality, timeliness, access, trust, reuse, risk, decision impact, and reduced reporting burden?
Strong response indicators: Uses a balanced set of outcome, implementation, service, risk, equity, and user-experience measures; disaggregates appropriately; explains limitations; establishes baselines and review cadence; and changes course when evidence warrants.
- What would you prioritize during your first 90 days?
Strong response indicators: Would map executive priorities and decision rights, inventory critical data domains and risks, assess governance and platform maturity, establish a steward network, and propose a sequenced enterprise roadmap; listens before redesigning, identifies urgent risks, delivers credible early improvements, and creates an achievable longer-term roadmap with owners and measures.
Position Description
Under the direction of the appropriate district administrator, the Chief Data Officer leads enterprise data strategy and governance so trustworthy, protected, interoperable information supports instruction, operations, accountability, research, and public stewardship.
The position connects policy, people, process, information, and technology; establishes repeatable practices; makes unresolved risk visible; and supports continuous improvement without displacing the authority of designated program, legal, privacy, security, fiscal, instructional, or executive decision-makers.
Reports To
Illustrative reporting relationship: Superintendent, deputy superintendent, or other cabinet-level executive. Insert the school district’s approved reporting relationship here.
Required Education and Credentials
Required
- Master’s degree in data science, information systems, statistics, research, public administration, business administration, education, or a related field.
- No specific credential is universally required; relevant data governance, privacy, analytics, project-management, or technology certifications are preferred.
- Successful completion of all district-required employment clearances and assigned privacy, security, accessibility, records, and safety training.
Preferred
- Graduate study, advanced coursework, or current professional learning directly related to the position’s assigned scope.
- Relevant training in project management, facilitation, change management, data-informed improvement, and public-sector service.
Required / Desired Experience
Required Experience
- Progressively responsible leadership of enterprise data, analytics, governance, research, information systems, or related cross-functional programs.
- Experience coordinating deadline-driven work with multiple departments, users, or school sites.
- Experience handling confidential information and documenting decisions, exceptions, and completed work.
Desired Experience
- Executive experience establishing governance bodies, data platforms, master/reference data, metadata, quality controls, privacy-aware access, analytics portfolios, and measurable data culture.
- Experience developing procedures, training users, improving processes, and supporting continuity during staff or system changes.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Enterprise Strategy and Governance
- Develop and maintain district data strategy, principles, governance charter, decision rights, standards, and investment roadmap.
- Chair or support an executive data-governance body and accountable domain councils; track decisions, conditions, exceptions, and actions.
- Define owners, stewards, custodians, users, reviewers, and escalation paths for critical data domains and products.
Architecture, Quality, and Interoperability
- Set direction for enterprise models, metadata, lineage, master/reference data, integration, analytics, retention, and controlled access.
- Establish measurable quality expectations and remediation workflows tied to business processes and fitness for purpose.
- Promote standards-based, secure, maintainable data exchange and reduce duplicative pipelines, shadow datasets, and manual reconciliation.
Responsible Access, Analytics, and AI
- Coordinate privacy-aware access, research, analytics, reporting, and responsible AI governance with designated legal, privacy, security, and program authorities.
- Prioritize high-value data products and decision supports with transparent definitions, limitations, provenance, and accountable owners.
- Establish review for consequential analytics and models, including validity, bias, subgroup impact, human oversight, monitoring, and retirement.
Leadership and Value Realization
- Build data literacy and stewardship capacity among executives, program teams, schools, analysts, and operational staff.
- Report data risk, quality, delivery, adoption, value, and unresolved decisions to executive leadership and governing bodies.
- Manage assigned budgets, vendors, employees, continuity, and improvement; perform other related duties consistent with classification.
Required Skills and Abilities
Knowledge of
- Enterprise data strategy, governance operating models, stewardship, metadata, lineage, quality, master/reference data, interoperability, and lifecycle management
- K–12 student, employee, finance, assessment, accountability, special-program, facilities, nutrition, and operational data contexts
- Privacy, security, records, research governance, public reporting, ethical analysis, responsible AI, and internal controls
- Modern data architecture, integration, warehouses/lakehouses, semantic layers, business intelligence, APIs, SQL, and comparable tools
Ability to
- Establish executive decision rights and durable accountability across organizational boundaries
- Translate district strategy into a prioritized data portfolio, architecture, governance roadmap, and investment case
- Resolve conflicting definitions and ownership through evidence, facilitation, and documented authority
- Communicate uncertainty, limitations, privacy risk, and decision consequences to technical and nontechnical audiences
- Develop leaders, stewards, analysts, and communities of practice rather than centralizing all data expertise
- Measure whether data investments improve decisions, services, equity, compliance, and operational capacity
Work Environment
- Work is performed primarily in district offices, schools, meeting rooms, training environments, and other computer-based professional settings, with remote participation as authorized.
- The position requires extended computer use and detailed review of records, systems, reports, procedures, communications, or technical documentation.
- Work involves frequent coordination with cabinet leaders, program owners, data stewards, technology, privacy, security, researchers, educators, and community partners.
- The employee may encounter competing priorities, interruptions, confidential matters, fixed deadlines, and time-sensitive problems requiring calm, documented judgment.
- Workload may increase during school opening and closing, reporting cycles, audits, major changes, incidents, and other critical district operations.
Other Requirements
- Successfully complete required criminal-record, fingerprint, and employment clearances.
- Complete a tuberculosis risk assessment and any examination required by applicable law or district policy.
- Complete district-required cybersecurity, privacy, accessibility, nondiscrimination, workplace-safety, and records-management training.
- Maintain professional confidentiality and comply with district policies governing records, information security, acceptable technology use, conflicts of interest, and data access.
- Travel between district offices, schools, meetings, training locations, and professional-development activities as assigned.
- Possess a valid California driver’s license and maintain insurability when driving is an essential function of the position.
- Occasionally work evening, weekend, or extended hours during critical operations, incidents, deadlines, public meetings, or system transitions.
- Regularly sit, stand, walk, speak, hear, read, and operate computers and standard office equipment; occasionally lift, carry, or move records, equipment, or supplies weighing up to 25 pounds.
- Perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation.