Assistant Chief Information Officer

Duke Careers • Durham, NC

1d • Onsite

About The Position

The Assistant Chief Information Officer (ACIO) role is designed as a senior, flexible, leadership position with University-wide scope, responsible for coordinating strategy, enablement, and governance across centralized and distributed technology, data, and analytical functions. The role is intended to evolve over time in response to Duke’s institutional priorities and the changing technology landscape. Initially, the ACIO will focus on Data and Emerging Technology, providing leadership for the strategy and governance of institutional and administrative data as enterprise assets, including establishing and leading an enterprise data management program; and for the coordinated evaluation and adoption of new technologies, including creating and evolving the governance structures that accelerate adoption of emerging technologies. In the initial phase, the ACIO will work across OIT, distributed administrative and academic units, and with faculty domain experts to enable the responsible sharing and use of institutional data, particularly data generated by and used within Duke’s operational and administrative systems. The ACIO will also establish architectural and governance frameworks that allow trusted enterprise data to be integrated into operational platforms, workflows, and decision-support environments, while creating durable frameworks and operating models that can extend to additional technology domains in the future. The ACIO is accountable for enterprise data architecture and the institutional data platform(s) (e.g., University data warehouse, data transfer warehouse, etc.) and works in close partnership with institutional analytics leaders to ensure the platforms supports strategic analytic and reporting needs. The ACIO must bring strong technical credibility while operating primarily as a strategist and integrator with institutional leaders who are outside the technology realm. This role operates at the executive level, shaping institutional direction for data and emerging technologies through engagement with University leadership. The ACIO will build governance and operating models that translate technical capability into measurable institutional outcomes. The ACIO advances enterprise data governance, including policy, standards, access models, and stewardship structures. The ACIO works closely with institutional partners operating under delegated authority, including those responsible for academic analytic definitions and reporting standards, to ensure alignment within the enterprise governance framework. As such, the ACIO will also work closely with university leaders, data stewards, data managers, and other professionals spanning the Office of Research and Innovation (ORI), Office of General Counsel (OGC), Office of Audit, Risk and Compliance (OARC), and other units and will also have a close strategic relationship with the Institutional Research (IR) office. As an ongoing responsibility, the ACIO will lead strategy setting and coordination across OIT and with other university functions to evaluate emerging technologies and guide their appropriate adoption. As technologies mature from exploration into established services, responsibility will transition into existing OIT operational and service units. Achieving the mission requires a strong commitment to collaboration and engagement, across Duke’s many distributed functions and operating units. It also depends on ensuring Duke’s administrative and institutional data are treated as strategic assets that are trusted, well-governed, interoperable, and effectively orchestrated to support decision-making, operations, and institutional strategy.

Requirements

• Excellent oral and writing skills
• Collaborative and results-oriented attitude
• Diplomatic approach
• Curiosity required to stay current across a range of rapidly evolving domains
• Operating within a complex and distributed environment
• Bachelor’s degree
• Ten or more years of progressive leadership experience in technology, data/analytics, security/privacy, or related domains
• Demonstrated experience leading complex organizations through strategy setting, governance, and enablement of new services
• Significant experience operating in highly collaborative, federated environments with multiple stakeholders and data domains
• Experience working closely with IT, analytics, governance, and security teams
• Strong executive communication skills, including at a Board level
• Demonstrated stakeholder engagement and influence skills
• Proven leadership in collaborative, matrixed environments; ability to create alignment even without direct authority
• Excellent verbal, written, and analytical skills, and strong judgment in balancing innovation, risk, and operational needs
• Strategic, systems-oriented thinker with strong execution capability
• Ability to work effectively with senior leaders, faculty, technical professionals, and governance partners
• Intellectual curiosity and a commitment to continuous learning in a rapidly evolving technology landscape
• Demonstrated experience leading senior leaders in federated environments
• Experience establishing enterprise governance structures with formal decision rights
• Track record of aligning technology strategy with institutional mission and financial priorities
• Experience presenting to executive leadership and governing boards

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree or equivalent experience
• Experience in higher education and demonstrated success leading within a large, complex, distributed organization with differing stakeholder expectations
• Familiarity with AI, cloud services, advanced analytics, and modern data architectures

Responsibilities

• Lead the University’s enterprise data strategy, including governance, architecture, access frameworks, and the development of shared data platforms that enable analytics and decision-making across the institution
• Over time, define, implement, and evolve a University-wide strategy for institutional and administrative data as shared enterprise assets
• Establish and mature governance frameworks that create durable stewardship, accountability, and decision rights for institutional data
• Promote a Duke-wide culture of trust, transparency, and ethical use of administrative data, including its secondary and tertiary uses, where authorized
• Enable secure reuse of administrative data for innovation, including AI-driven applications and student- or faculty-facing tools
• Establish and enforce enterprise standards for data access, reuse, and interoperability beyond systems of record, whether shared through analytics platforms, data products, or other means
• Lead the architectural and governance approach for integrating enterprise data with operational and transactional systems, enabling trusted data to inform and automate institutional workflows, decision-support tools, and digitally mediated services
• Provide executive oversight in partnership with business and security leaders to design, build, and support the secure data environments from which institutional data is managed and accessed
• Align enterprise data strategy with institutional risk posture in collaboration with the CISO and security teams on risk-aware approaches to data access and use
• Serve as a strategic partner to the Director of Institutional Research and accountable business leaders to align institutional data platforms, governance, and analytics
• Establish institutional alignment on definitions, metrics, and reporting standards
• Provide strategic direction for modernization of institutional analytics capabilities, while maintaining appropriate governance and stewardship
• Define enterprise architectural and governance frameworks that enable authorized reuse of administrative data for research and innovation while preserving privacy, security, and system integrity
• Prioritize and sponsor high-impact institutional use cases that demonstrate the strategic value of administrative data, such as student success analytics, learning and advising tools, and research projects that rely on operational or administrative data; coordinate with existing OIT operational teams, as needed, to deliver
• Ensure patterns for administrative data reuse support both analytical insight and operational application within enterprise systems, while preserving system integrity and governance boundaries
• Serve as the executive point of alignment between administrative and research data domains, ensuring clear governance boundaries, shared standards where appropriate, and coordinated institutional strategy in partnership with OR&I leadership
• Lead coordinated evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies relevant to Duke and ensure alignment between technical evaluation and the business office communities, including AI, advanced analytics, and intelligent automation technologies, and enterprise evaluation of externally sourced technology platforms
• Working with ITSO and OIT, establish enterprise policy frameworks and guardrails for responsible AI adoption
• Guide institutional policy and governance frameworks for responsible AI, advanced analytics technologies, and the operational deployment of predictive models that use institutional data
• Ensure institutional data strategies and governance support responsible experimentation and scalable deployment of new technologies, in coordination with the ITSO, OIT offices and others
• Coordinate with architects, engineers, and functional leaders to authorize and govern the transition of emerging technologies from experimentation into enterprise-supported services, including with limitations or policies as may be necessary to develop and vet through leadership
• Provide executive leadership and strategic direction for OIT’s Data Analytics Practice, a team of 10 data analysts and data engineers, led by a Senior Manager and a Director
• Define the strategic roadmap for enterprise data services supporting secondary and tertiary use
• Coordinate emerging technology efforts through partnerships with architects, engineers, and domain experts across OIT and the University, including functional leaders
• Serve as a principal advisor to the CIO and senior leaders on institutional data and technology enablement; chair or sponsor enterprise data and emerging technology governance forums, as appropriate
• Serve as the primary OIT point of coordination for issues at the intersection of administrative and research data, ensuring clarity of roles, responsibilities, and decision rights
• Represent OIT in cross-university forums related to data, analytics, and emerging technology coordination
• Represent Duke in inter-institutional forums related to these areas and others, including as a surrogate for the CIO

Benefits

• Opportunity to influence how one of the world’s leading research universities uses data and technology to advance discovery, education, and service
• Work in a highly collaborative environment where innovation, ethics, and institutional responsibility go hand in hand
• Executive leaders value thoughtful governance as much as technological advancement
• Dynamic academic setting
• Commitment to collaboration across disciplines
• Chance to shape enterprise capabilities that impact students, faculty, staff, and research communities worldwide
• Duke University’s benefits package

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees