Senior Manager, IT Applications

Vertex Education • Chandler, AZ

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About The Position

Be the one who makes a difference! At Vertex Education we are a team of high achievers, courageous leaders, and passionate believers in changing lives through education. As a purpose-led education services provider, our mission is destined to benefit many and yet it starts with just one person inspired to work together with us to make a memorable and meaningful difference for our clients, schools, students, and communities. Be the one who makes a difference—with us. As the Senior Manager of Applications, you will own execution for the end-to-end parent and student lifecycle across Legacy Traditional Schools. You will provide oversight in support of configuration, integration, and support the core systems that power every touchpoint for families and school staff, including Student Information Systems (SIS) and a new parent CRM that covers all parent services, communications, and support interactions. Success requires a hands-on, execution-focused leader who spends most of their time improving real workflows, resolving issues, and launching changes. You bring coherence to our application ecosystem by simplifying processes, standardizing data, and ensuring that parents and students experience a single, intuitive journey from first inquiry through graduation.

Requirements

• Proven experience managing a portfolio of enterprise applications, including K-12 Student Information Systems (e.g., PowerSchool, Infinite Campus) and CRM platforms.
• Proven experience directly configuring and supporting a portfolio of enterprise applications, including K-12 Student Information Systems (e.g., PowerSchool, Infinite Campus) and CRM or parent-engagement platforms.
• Experience creating and executing a tactical application roadmap and backlog, delivering a steady cadence of configuration changes and small projects that simplify a complex ecosystem and improve user satisfaction.
• Track record of personally leading new enterprise system implementations, including requirements discovery, configuration, testing, training, and post-launch support.
• Demonstrated success developing and executing user adoption strategies, including training programs and support models for non-technical school staff.
• Strong vendor management and contract negotiation skills, with experience holding technology partners accountable for service delivery.
• Experience establishing and enforcing application governance and change management processes to ensure data integrity.
• Prior experience as a people manager with responsibility for coaching, mentoring, and prioritizing the work of a technical team.

Nice To Haves

• Previous experience working directly within a K-12 school, school district, or charter management organization.
• Direct, hands-on configuration experience with platforms like HubSpot, PowerSchool SIS, or Infinite Campus .including building workflows, forms, automations, templates, and reports.
• Experience in business process mapping and redesign for academic or school operations workflows.
• Formal project management experience leading cross-departmental technology initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate data connections or workarounds in an environment without a dedicated integration platform.

Responsibilities

• Application Strategy & Roadmap: Translate the operational needs of Legacy Traditional Schools into a prioritized backlog and executable roadmap and personally deliver configuration changes and small projects that simplify the user experience for school staff.
• Design, configure, and document future-state workflows across SIS and the parent CRM to support the full parent and student lifecycle (inquiry, enrollment, attendance, communication, services, support), with a focus on data integrity and reducing manual work for school staff.
• Lead and execute the end-to-end implementation of the new parent-facing CRM, including detailed configuration, data migration coordination, integrations, testing, and go-live support.
• Conduct regular hands-on audits of the application portfolio, including reviewing real workflows and usage data, to identify consolidation and decommission opportunities and implement agreed changes.
• Establish and manage formal feedback channels, such as user surveys and focus groups, to continuously measure and use them to drive continuous configuration and workflow improvements
• Serve as the designated incident commander for critical application outages, ensuring clear communication and timely resolution for all affected school communities.
• Partner directly with school leaders and administrative staff to configure and optimize SIS platforms (PowerSchool, Infinite Campus etc.,), and the parent CRM, into more intuitive workflows.
• Personally build and maintain admin guides, how-to articles, and short videos that help staff self-serve common tasks and reduce repetitive support requests.
• Function as the primary relationship owner for key application vendors, holding them accountable for service delivery, support performance, and contractual obligations.
• Lead contract negotiations and renewals, working with leadership to secure favorable terms and maximize the value of our investments in technology.
• Direct and oversee the work of vendor professional services during implementations and projects, ensuring their deliverables are aligned with the specific needs of our schools.
• Maintain a strong awareness of vendor product roadmaps to inform internal strategy and advocate for features that directly benefit Legacy Traditional Schools.
• Design and implement a formal change management process to review, approve, and communicate all significant application configuration requests.
• Establish and lead a cross-functional governance committee to prioritize enhancement requests and align application changes with network-wide school priorities.
• Provide direct coaching, mentorship, and performance feedback to a small team of application specialists, aligning their work to strategic priorities.
• Define and manage team processes using tools like Asana and Zendesk to ensure clear ownership of tickets and projects, fast response times, and visibility into work in progress.

Benefits

• Enjoy industry-leading pay, rewards, referral bonuses, with unlimited flexible paid time-off for performance.
• Be able to care for your health and your family with comprehensive medical, dental and vision benefits and invest in your future with 401(k) plans with a 6% employer match on your contributions.
• Enhance your growth and development with mentoring and money to take training classes.
• Thrive in a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive environment where we treat others with fairness and respect, celebrate diversity, and elevate equality and inclusion as an equal opportunity employer.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed