"Associate Director, Enterprise Data Platforms"

About Us

Are you ready to transform lives through academic excellence, innovative research, strong community partnerships and economic opportunity? Kennesaw State University is one of the 50 largest public institutions in the country. With growing enrollment and global reach, we continue to expand our institutional influence and prominence beyond the state of Georgia. We offer more than 190 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees to empower our 47,000 students to become thought leaders, lifelong learners, and informed global citizens. Our entrepreneurial spirit, high-impact research, and Division I athletics draw students from throughout the region and from more than 100 countries across the globe. Our university's vibrant culture, career opportunities, rich benefits, and values of respect, integrity, collaboration, inclusivity, and accountability make us an employer of choice. We are part of the University System of Georgia. We are searching for talented people to join Kennesaw State University in our vision. Come Take Flight at KSU!

Location

(Primary Location for Job Responsibilities) Our Kennesaw campus is located at 1000 Chastain Road NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144.

Our Marietta campus is located at 1100 South Marietta Parkway, Marietta, GA 30060.

Job Summary

Provides leadership for the university's enterprise data infrastructure and integration services while maintaining active involvement in technical work, including but not limited to cloud-based unified data platforms, legacy data warehousing systems, and enterprise data ingestion operations. Ensures platforms and services are reliable, secure, and optimized for performance, while delivering the infrastructure that enables institutional reporting, analytics, and compliance needs. Ensures that managerial responsibility blends with technical expertise to provide scalable and cost-effective solutions.

Responsibilities

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Provides strategic and operational leadership for enterprise data infrastructure services, balancing technical execution with managerial responsibility for staff and service delivery
2. Administers and optimizes unified data platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, including capacity management, performance monitoring and optimization, technical governance, and access management
3. Builds and operates standardized data ingestion pipelines with metadata capture, schema enforcement, error handling, and secure storage, ensuring all source data is ingested once and made consistently available for downstream processing
4. As applicable, designs and maintains reusable data preparation processes (e.g., standardization, simple deduplication, schema checks, optimization) that are performed once centrally to ensure consistent, high-quality inputs for downstream processes
5. Manages legacy data platforms such as SAS (SAS 9, SAS Grid, Viya) and/or Tableau, ensuring reliability, security, and performance
6. Provides infrastructure and operational support for legacy ETL processes, as well as system-wide data processes, such as the ADC (USG Academic Data Collection)
7. Ensures data infrastructure services comply with institutional governance, privacy, and security policies, and applicable regulations such as FERPA, HIPAA, and PCI
8. Monitors performance and implement proactive measures for scalability, efficiency, and reliability
9. Collaborates with university stakeholders to align data infrastructure strategy is aligned with reporting, analytics, and compliance needs
10. Develops and supervises staff through mentoring, professional growth opportunities, training, performance management, and knowledge sharing
11. Evaluates emerging technologies and recommend adoption of tools that advance data, analytics, and integration capabilities
12. Fosters a culture of curiosity and innovation, continuous process improvement, ownership and accountability, building repeatable solutions, learning, and data-informed decision making

Required Qualifications

Educational Requirements
Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution of higher education.

Required Experience
Seven (7) years of related IT experience.

Preferred Qualifications

Preferred Educational Qualifications
An advanced degree from an accredited institution of higher education in a related field

Preferred Experience
Previous experience with Microsoft Fabric or Microsoft Synapse Analytics, including platform administration and data pipeline development
Experience working in higher education IT environments
Hands-on experience building automation solutions with tools such as Power Automate, Power Apps, and Decisions (BPA)
Hands-on experience designing and building system integration
Experience designing and building integration services using iPaaS platforms such as Boomi or MuleSoft

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

ABILITIES
Able to function with autonomy, making sound and timely decisions, anticipating problems, and appropriately assessing and communicating risks, benefits, and alternatives
Able to lead large, complex projects requiring tight coordination across IT and business units
Able to analyze, design, implement, and troubleshoot complex software systems, services, and solutions
Able to handle multiple tasks or projects at one time meeting assigned deadlines

KNOWLEDGE
Expertise in enterprise data infrastructure and architecture, including cloud-based data platforms (e.g., Microsoft Fabric), business intelligence and analytics platforms, information systems, and the full lifecycle of data operations, performance management, and system integration
Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and operating on-premises and cloud database platforms, enterprise data warehousing solutions, and data integration and transformation tools
Knowledge of enterprise integration and automation technologies, including integration platforms as a service (IpaaS), business process automation (BPA), and robotic process automation (RPA) tools
Knowledge of regulatory and compliance standards related to data privacy and security in higher education

SKILLS
Excellent interpersonal, initiative, teamwork, problem solving, independent judgment, organization, communication (verbal and written), time management, project management, relationship-building, and presentation skills
Skilled in leading and developing teams of highly technical individuals, fostering growth and professional development
Well versed in current and emerging technologies, trends, and industry best practices relevant to enterprise data infrastructure
Strong customer service orientation, with the ability to build trust and deliver responsive support to stakeholders
Proficient with standard computer applications and programs associated with the position (e.g., Microsoft Office suite)
Strong attention to detail and follow-up skills