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Governance Lead (m/f/d)

Cologne, GermanyFull-time

The role

The independent automotive aftermarket runs on data. But that data sits in silos, locked inside each company. The value of connecting it is obvious to everyone. What’s missing is the infrastructure that makes sharing it safe. Kyvera exists to build it. Governance is not a support function here. It is the product.

As Governance Lead, you build the mechanisms that make trusted data collaboration work in practice: the rules, contracts, and processes that let independent, often competing, companies share data without exposing competitive intelligence and without regulatory risk. Your work decides whether partners join, stay, and contribute.

This is a founding role, and the scope is broad by design: governance architecture, early operational execution, shareholder and partner coordination, and the operational interface with TecAlliance during the ramp-up.

You will not be handed a framework. You will write it. Then you will operate it, improve it, and defend it in rooms where shareholder legal departments stress-test every clause. Your task is not to create theoretical governance. Your task is to make trust operational: simple enough for partners to use, robust enough for regulated data collaboration, and clear enough to support fast decisions.

What you’ll do

  • Design the machinery that lets competitors pool data safely, with Kyvera as the neutral firewall between those who contribute data and those who use it: what may be shared, how it is protected, and who may use what for which purpose.
  • Build and manage a reliable network of external law firms and specialist experts. Legal training is an asset in this role, but the job is not to write opinions. You decide which questions need outside counsel, brief the right firm, challenge the advice, and turn it into mechanisms partners can actually use. Competition law is where this matters most; the EU Data Act, GDPR, and NIS2 follow close behind.
  • As Kyvera’s shared data standards take shape, define how they will be governed: who decides on changes, and how stability is protected while products move fast.
  • Build the structures through which participants shape how the data space is run: who gets a voice, how decisions are made, and how conflicts are resolved.
  • Make governance usable. Treat contracts and onboarding like a product: measure where partners get stuck and remove the friction.
  • Run governance operations in the early phase, from shareholder and partner follow-up to use-case coordination and issue resolution, along with the operational shared-services interface with TecAlliance.

Who you are

  • You have operated governance in the real world: a consortium, a joint venture, a standardisation body, a scheme, or a comparable multi-party structure. You know what survives contact with participants and what only works on paper.
  • You are fluent in the legal dimension of this work, whether by training or by experience, and you know the limits of that fluency. You would rather ask counsel a sharp question than write a long memo yourself.
  • You can hold a room. Shareholder legal departments, trade representatives, and sceptical partners will test your work. You stay steady, take the point, and come back with a better mechanism.
  • You think like a builder. Ambiguity does not stall you; a missing process is something you write, try, and improve. You measure governance by whether people use it.
  • You work in German and English at negotiation level.

What this role offers

A founding seat in an institution the industry has talked about for years and never built. You shape the rules of data collaboration for an entire market, working directly with the shareholders and the partners whose trust you are building. What you design here becomes the reference for how the aftermarket shares data.

You work as part of a small founding team and report into a flat structure with a direct line to the Managing Directors on critical compliance, competition-law, and data-sovereignty risk.

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Who thrives here:

You build first versions

Most of what you make will not have existed before. We build to think: prototypes before papers, validation before polish, and getting it wrong on the way to right is the job, not a deviation from it.

You own outcomes, not output

Success here is measured value in the market, nothing softer. Decisions sit with the people doing the work, and work that cannot prove its value is stopped, which is what protects the work that can.

You work with the market

Manufacturers, distributors, workshops: the people the work is for are in the room, and the unit of persuasion is a demonstration on their own data. Whether they use what you build is the review.

You keep commitment speed

Momentum beats hesitation: short decision cycles, direct paths, done beating perfect while we learn. The pace you saw in the hiring process is the pace of the place.

Frequently asked questions:

A CV, the work or experience you are proudest of, and a few lines on what you want to achieve for yourself with us. No cover-letter rituals.

Take your time. We are happy to give you space to think and to finish any other interview processes you are going through.

English is our working language. German can be an advantage in certain roles; where it is, the job description says so.

No: you need an existing right to work in Germany.

Yes, after twelve months, or sooner if something material has changed in your experience or skills.

Most of the team is in the Cologne area and comes to the office regularly, and we prefer it that way: we are building this company and its culture, and that happens in person. Occasional work from home is normal, nothing is forbidden; the settled policy is one we will write together as the team grows. We can be flexible during a transition period if you are relocating.

Not at the moment: the team is small and every hire is senior.