Records Management Director

Most weeks in this role move across records policy work, retention schedule maintenance, ediscovery support, and the partnerships with legal, IT, compliance, and business leaders who all touch the records environment. You're reviewing policy compliance, working through major retention or disposition questions, engaging in legal hold management and ediscovery requests, and being the senior voice when records issues surface in legal or regulatory contexts.

A common surprise is how much of the role is influence and education work. Many find that records management has limited authority and substantial responsibility — the function rarely owns the systems where records actually live, but is accountable for the policies that govern them. Translating records requirements into something operational leaders will actually do tends to be a recurring negotiation, particularly as ROT (redundant, obsolete, trivial) information accumulates.

People who enjoy the patient work of governance applied to information tend to thrive. The role often suits those who can hold detailed regulatory knowledge alongside the diplomatic skills cross-functional governance work demands, and who get satisfaction from records environments that are actually defensible. The cost can be the slow visibility of impact and the political work of getting business stakeholders to take records responsibility seriously before something forces the conversation.