Director of Data & Analytics

Pension Amazing Benefits High-Impact Leadership Role Build a Newly Redesigned Function Strong Work-Life Balance

This Jobot Job is hosted by: Carrie Powell
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Salary: $76,000 - $96,000 per year

A bit about us:

We are an established public higher education institution serving thousands of students across multiple locations in Southwest Michigan. Our organization has a long history in the community and is focused on student success, workforce development, accessibility, continuous improvement, and responsible stewardship of institutional resources.

We are currently making a significant investment in the future of our technology and data environment. The organization is in the early stages of a multiyear cloud migration while simultaneously redesigning its institutional research, reporting, analytics, and compliance function. This is not simply a replacement hire. Retirements created an opportunity to step back, rethink the structure, and build a team designed around where the institution is going next.

Why join us?

• Build rather than inherit: Join a newly reorganized team and help define how institutional research, reporting, data governance, and compliance operate going forward.
• Major transformation underway: Play a leadership role during a multiyear cloud migration and modernization of legacy/manual reporting processes.
• Real institutional visibility: Partner with executive leadership, academic departments, student services, financial aid, IT, and other areas across the institution.
• Meaningful technical work: This is not a director role where you simply manage people and attend meetings. The organization wants a leader who understands the underlying data, systems, reporting, and analytics work.
• Ownership of data governance: Establish clearer data definitions, ownership, stewardship, quality controls, and reporting standards across the organization.
• Mission-driven environment: The work directly influences student success, enrollment strategy, program effectiveness, compliance, planning, and resource decisions.
• Strong work-life balance: Primarily onsite with one work-from-home day per week, Summer Fridays, a mid-winter break, and a culture that is intentional about employee wellbeing.
• Exceptional benefits: Comprehensive health coverage, employer-provided dental and vision, retirement options, generous leave, and tuition benefits.
• Stability: Low employee turnover and the security of an established public institution.

Job Details

Position Summary:

The Director of Institutional Research & Compliance will provide strategic and hands-on leadership across institutional research, data management, analytics, regulatory reporting, and data governance.

This person will be accountable for the quality, consistency, accessibility, and usefulness of institutional data while ensuring required federal and state reporting is completed accurately and on time.

The Director will work across academic, administrative, technology, student services, and leadership teams to turn complex information into actionable insight while also helping modernize how data is collected, integrated, governed, reported, and used.

This is a highly technical leadership role. The organization can provide time to learn its specific environment, culture, and processes, but it needs someone who already understands the fundamentals of institutional research, reporting, analytics, databases, data quality, and compliance.

Institutional Data & Analytics Leadership:

• Lead the collection, validation, analysis, and interpretation of institutional data.
• Ensure leaders have accurate, accessible information for planning, assessment, budgeting, resource allocation, and operational decision-making.
• Use advanced analytical methods to identify trends and translate complex data into meaningful information.
• Support forecasting and predictive analysis tied to enrollment, student outcomes, institutional performance, and other strategic priorities.
• Oversee institutional dashboards, reports, reporting tools, and analytics platforms.
• Ensure reporting solutions remain aligned with institutional priorities and governance standards.

Reporting & Compliance:

• Own federal, state, and other required institutional reporting processes.
• Oversee IPEDS and other mandated higher education submissions, surveys, and data collections.
• Validate and reconcile information across multiple systems before external submission.
• Maintain strong documentation and controls around official institutional reporting.
• Serve as a key institutional contact for external reporting agencies, requests, audits, and follow-up inquiries.
• Partner closely with areas such as student services and financial aid where reporting and compliance requirements are particularly important.

Data Governance:

• Provide leadership for institution-wide data governance.
• Establish and reinforce common definitions, standards, ownership, stewardship responsibilities, and quality expectations.
• Improve data integrity and consistency across departments and systems.
• Partner with IT and functional data owners to define appropriate access and accountability.
• Balance accessibility with privacy, security, regulatory, and compliance requirements.
• Participate in and help guide institutional data governance committees and working groups.

Technology & Modernization:

• Help move the organization away from manual, legacy, and highly customized reporting processes.
• Partner with IT and functional leaders to improve integration and data exchange across systems.
• Support the organization's broader cloud transformation.
• Identify opportunities to streamline processes, automate reporting, and reduce unnecessary customizations.
• Work with reporting, visualization, database, and business intelligence technologies.
• Help create scalable systems and processes rather than one-off solutions.

Strategic Collaboration:

• Work with executive leadership and stakeholders throughout the institution to understand information needs.
• Translate technical and analytical findings for audiences with different levels of data expertise.
• Turn data into meaningful narratives rather than simply producing reports.
• Support institutional planning, student-success initiatives, program evaluation, enrollment strategy, and resource allocation.
• Lead or support institutional survey activities, data-quality review, and reporting of survey findings.

Leadership & Capacity Building:

• Supervise and develop employees reporting into the function.
• Help build a newly structured team and establish effective working relationships and responsibilities.
• Develop documentation, training, and guidance for employees using institutional data and reporting tools.
• Improve data literacy across the institution.
• Promote evidence-based decision-making and responsible data use.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Data Science, Business Analytics, Educational Research, or a closely related discipline.
• 4 years of progressively responsible experience in institutional research, data analysis, business intelligence, compliance reporting, or a related area.
• Strong experience with relational databases, enterprise reporting platforms, and business intelligence/analytics tools.
• Demonstrated responsibility for institutional reporting, data validation, reconciliation, and cross-functional decision support.
• Advanced analytical, statistical, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to analyze information from multiple data sources and translate findings into actionable insights.
• Strong written, verbal, and presentation skills with the ability to communicate with executives, technical teams, faculty/staff, and external organizations.
• Knowledge of federal and state higher education reporting requirements and sound data-governance practices.
• Experience modernizing data management or reporting environments.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate across multiple levels and functions.
• Supervisory experience.

Preferred Background:

• Higher education, institutional research, institutional effectiveness, or related public-sector environment.
• Master's degree in Information Systems, Data Science, Business Analytics, Educational Research, or a related area.
• Experience with institutional data governance.
• Experience with large-scale technology transformation or cloud migration.
• Power BI, Tableau, relational databases, SQL, enterprise reporting tools, or comparable analytics technologies.
• Experience with IPEDS, state higher-education reporting, institutional surveys, accreditation, or related compliance reporting.

Interested in hearing more? Easy Apply now by clicking the "Apply Now" button.

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Salary : $76,000 - $96,000