Director, Professional Services (Data Migration & Conversion and AI & Automation)

Ellucian•UNAVAILABLE, UNAVAILABLE

8d•Remote

About The Position

Ellucian is seeking an experienced Director, Professional Services to lead its global Data Migration & Conversion and AI & Automation capabilities within Professional Services. The role owns the strategy, operating model, people, delivery readiness, methodology, tooling, customer outcomes, and operational performance of these practices. The Director will turn delivery experience, regional innovation, and emerging technologies into consistent, scalable services that improve implementation speed, quality, predictability, and customer value. The Director will set a multi-year capability roadmap, lead managers and technical teams, guide complex customer programs, and translate operations into measurable financial and delivery outcomes. The role partners across Professional Services, Product, Engineering, Cloud, Support, Security, Sales, Finance, Enablement, and regional teams to create a globally aligned model while preserving valuable customer-developed lessons and assets. The position leads migration and conversion delivery from discovery and source-data assessment through extraction, mapping, transformation, loading, validation, reconciliation, testing, cutover, and post-load verification. It also leads customer-facing and internal AI and automation capabilities, including AI-assisted process optimization, software development, UiPath-based RPA, ServiceNow automation, intelligent document processing, APIs, and agentic or knowledge-based solutions. The Director establishes scalable methods, tooling, governance, team capability, delivery metrics, and financial accountability across both practices. Success includes consistent, high-quality and predictable delivery; reduced migration and automation cycle times and effort; achievement of revenue, margin, utilization, capacity, and cost-efficiency objectives; adoption and reuse of global methods and assets; measurable value from AI and automation investments; and a healthy, capable team with effective governance of data, AI, security, supportability, and operational risk.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive experience in professional services, consulting, enterprise software delivery, data services, engineering, or a closely related field, including significant people-leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated success leading global or distributed teams and building multidisciplinary capabilities across managers, technical leads, consultants, developers, and delivery practitioners.
Deep knowledge of complex enterprise data migration and conversion, including source-data discovery, ETL/ELT, mapping, transformation, validation, reconciliation, testing, cutover, and data-quality management.
Experience leading AI, software automation, or RPA portfolios, with practical knowledge of platforms such as UiPath or comparable tools and familiarity with APIs, SQL, scripting, intelligent document processing, and AI/ML-enabled workflows.
Proven ability to productize consulting capabilities through standardized methods, reusable assets, accelerators, reference architectures, runbooks, and enablement.
Strong operational and financial acumen, including utilization, revenue, margin, demand and capacity planning, labor strategy, business cases, and benefits realization.
Experience with Agile delivery and portfolio-management practices, including backlog prioritization, Jira or equivalent work-management platforms, and outcome-based metrics.
Expertise in design thinking and product management, applying human-centered design principles to identify customer needs, prioritize requirements, and translate ideas into actionable product strategies and solutions.
Executive-level communication, stakeholder management, and customer-facing consulting skills, including the ability to simplify complex technical and operational topics and influence across organizational boundaries.
Sound judgment regarding data privacy, security, responsible AI, intellectual property, compliance, and risk in customer and internal delivery environments.

Nice To Haves

Experience in higher education technology, student information systems, ERP implementations, or Ellucian Banner and Colleague environments.
Experience with cloud-native and agentic AI architectures, including AWS or Azure services, knowledge bases, vector search, orchestration, and secure model integration.
UiPath certification or equivalent automation-platform credentials.
Experience building and scaling a Center of Excellence, global delivery model, or nearshore capability.
Prior accountability for a consulting practice budget, P&L, or portfolio-level financial plan.
Background in process reengineering, Lean, Six Sigma, or another structured continuous-improvement discipline.

Responsibilities

Own and communicate the global strategy, roadmap, priorities, and operating model for Data Migration & Conversion and AI & Automation within Professional Services.
Define a portfolio of services, accelerators, reference architectures, reusable components, templates, runbooks, and implementation guidance for consistent use across regions and engagement models.
Translate regional practices and customer delivery lessons into scalable global methodology and tooling, preserving and incorporating valuable local capabilities where appropriate.
Establish intake, prioritization, investment, build-versus-buy, and lifecycle decisions for migration tooling, AI use cases, software automation, RPA, intelligent document processing, and related platforms.
Represent the practices in annual planning, executive reviews, strategic partnerships, and cross-functional initiatives.
Lead migration teams through discovery, source-data assessment, extraction, mapping, transformation, loading, validation, reconciliation, testing, dress rehearsals, cutover support, and post-load verification.
Set global standards for controlled and auditable migration delivery, including quality gates, data validation, test-data management, security, privacy, and customer readiness.
Advance data-conversion tooling through standardized extract templates, reusable mappings, code repositories, knowledge bases, automation, and AI-assisted mapping and transformation workflows.
Capture and manage gold-standard conversion assets and expertise as intellectual property, and improve them through delivery feedback.
Measure and improve migration time, cost, throughput, quality, and predictability; reduce avoidable defects and post-go-live escalations.
Lead customer-facing and internal automation capabilities spanning AI-assisted process optimization, software development, UiPath-based RPA, ServiceNow automation, intelligent document processing, APIs, and agentic or knowledge-based solutions.
Own the automation opportunity pipeline from process discovery and feasibility assessment through architecture, development, testing, deployment, adoption, support, and value realization.
Ensure solutions are secure, maintainable, documented, reusable, and aligned with responsible-AI, data-governance, compliance, and enterprise architecture expectations.
Establish Agile delivery practices and portfolio visibility using Jira or equivalent tools, with a consolidated backlog, transparent priorities, delivery metrics, and clear accountability.
Scale an AI & Automation Center of Excellence to increase throughput, reduce dependence on scarce senior subject-matter experts, and develop sustainable global and nearshore talent.
Lead, coach, and develop managers, technical leads, consultants, developers, and migration practitioners across a distributed global team.
Define organization design, role expectations, competency models, career paths, succession plans, certification priorities, and targeted enablement.
Build a culture of urgency, open learning, knowledge sharing, and scalable delivery while maintaining engineering and consulting discipline.
Own workforce and capacity planning, hiring, onboarding, performance management, team health, contractor and partner strategy, and skill deployment against demand.
Connect practice operations to financial outcomes, including demand forecasting, capacity, utilization, revenue, margin, labor mix, investment, and efficiency gains.
Establish and review a balanced scorecard covering delivery quality, cycle time, backlog throughput, utilization, revenue, customer satisfaction, reuse, automation savings, adoption, and team capability.
Provide governance and executive oversight for strategic or high-risk engagements, resolve escalations and systemic blockers, and ensure durable corrective actions.
Maintain delivery readiness by aligning methods, tools, environments, documentation, and enablement with product and SaaS release cycles.
Support Sales and account teams with service strategy, scoping, estimates, proposals, pricing inputs, demonstrations, and executive customer conversations for complex opportunities.
Serve as a trusted advisor and senior escalation point for customers undertaking complex migrations, conversions, automation programs, or AI-enabled transformation.
Build relationships with regional Professional Services teams and subject-matter experts to align global standards with customer and market realities.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Cloud, Support, Security, Legal, Finance, Enablement, and Sales to address platform gaps, prioritize investments, and ensure solutions can be supported at scale.
Develop customer evidence, case studies, metrics, and reusable lessons to strengthen adoption, pre-sales credibility, and continuous improvement.