Company: Western Governors University
Job Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Category: Institutional Research and Planning
Type: Full-Time
Job Type: Full time
Job Number: JR-025746
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.
Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.
The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.
At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
Grade: Professional 311 Pay Range: $100,000.00 - $150,000.00
Job Description
Institutional Analytics and Research (IAR) is looking for a strategic, systems-minded analytics professional to help elevate how analytics work gets done across the organization. This is not a traditional data analyst role focused on building reports and dashboards. Instead, you will serve as a force multiplier for a department of approximately 90 analytics professionals, helping establish standards, improve processes, increase transparency, and enable more effective collaboration across analytics, data engineering, enterprise technology, and business stakeholders.
In this role, you will drive the operational excellence behind analytics and research initiatives by developing scalable processes, advancing data governance practices, improving knowledge management, measuring business impact, and ensuring teams have the tools and frameworks needed to deliver extraordinary outcomes. You will act as a connector between technical and non-technical teams, helping transform complex work into clear priorities, actionable insights, and measurable value.
What You'll Do
- Design, implement, and continuously improve the operating processes that govern analytics work across IAR, including demand intake, prioritization, stakeholder engagement, resource planning, delivery tracking, and portfolio management.
- Create visibility into departmental work by developing frameworks that help leaders understand pipelines, priorities, capacity, expected business value, and delivery status.
- Define and enforce standard operating procedures, service level agreements, templates, governance practices, and analytics standards that drive consistency across teams.
- Advance data governance capabilities across IAR, including data cataloging, data lineage, data quality, metadata management, discoverability, and asset ownership.
- Partner closely with Data Engineering, Enterprise Technology, MLOps, and Product teams to improve data operations, issue management, observability, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Develop measurement frameworks that help quantify the impact of analytics initiatives, support prioritization decisions, and demonstrate the value created by IAR across WGU.
- Drive department-wide capability building through onboarding improvements, knowledge sharing, communities of practice, stakeholder education, learning resources, and process enablement initiatives.
What You'll Bring
- Bachelor's degree in a related field.
- 5 or more years of experience in Analytics with demonstrated experience in SDLC and Agile/Scrum.
- 3 or more years of experience in the definition and execution of workflows in several of the following areas: CI/CD, MLOps, Data Management, Data Governance, Data Engineering, Analytics Processes and Infrastructure, Data Quality, and Data Science.
- Demonstrated understanding of data governance concepts, including data lineage, data cataloging, metadata management, data classification, and data quality practices.
- Experience improving data discoverability, governance, and cataloging practices that help organizations identify, understand, and confidently use the right data assets.
- Experience partnering closely with Data Engineering teams to define processes, standards, governance frameworks, and operational improvements without serving as a hands-on data engineer.
- Strong ability to bridge technical and business stakeholders, translating complex data concepts into actionable recommendations, priorities, and outcomes.
Bonus Points
- Experience working within Databricks environments, including Databricks Unity Catalog and modern data governance practices.
- Experience with enterprise data governance and catalog solutions such as Collibra, Ataccama, or similar platforms.
- Experience as a leader, project manager, product owner, or senior individual contributor within analytics, data, business intelligence, or data governance organizations.
Experience in Lieu of Education
An equivalent combination of training, experience, credentials, or accomplishments demonstrating the ability to perform the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements.
What to Expect
At WGU, our mission drives everything we do, including how we hire. Our interview experience is designed to give qualified candidates the opportunity to show their best work through meaningful conversations and collaboration.
We thoughtfully review every application and invite forward the candidates whose experience and potential best align with the role and our mission.
- Introductory call (30 minutes)
- Hiring manager interview (30-45 minutes)
- Panel interview (1 hour)
- Final conversation with hiring manager (45 minutes)
Work Location
This is a full-time, in-office position requiring five days per week in our Salt Lake City, UT office, designed to foster the collaboration and connection that fuel our best work.
Visa Sponsorship
While we welcome applicants from all backgrounds, WGU is not able to provide visa sponsorship for this role.
Travel Requirement
This position requires occasional travel of up to 20%, including required attendance at designated company summits (typically one to two per year). Additional travel may include conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed. Additional travel may be assigned as needed to support business requirements.