Technical Director, Wharton Instructional Technology & Content

Job Description Summary

Wharton School Overview
Founded in 1881 as the world's first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is shaping the future of business by incubating ideas, driving insights, and creating leaders who change the world. With campuses in both Philadelphia and San Francisco, Wharton has over 850 staff, a faculty population of more than 235 renowned professors, and 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students. Each year 13,000 professionals from around the world advance their careers through Wharton Executive Education's individual, company-customized, and online programs. More than 104,000 Wharton alumni form a powerful global network of leaders who transform business every day. Wharton is home to a dynamic community of staff, bringing a wide range of skills, experiences, and perspectives. To learn more, visit www.wharton.upenn.edu.

The IT Technical Director for Wharton will lead instructional technology efforts under Wharton Computing's IDEA Courseware brand. This role provides strategic leadership for Wharton's learning management system (LMS) and courseware ecosystem, partnering with faculty and school leadership to enhance teaching and learning through innovative, scalable instructional technologies. The position oversees vendor relationships, budget coordination, and sustainable support models while serving as a school-wide subject matter expert and representative on university initiatives. It also includes supervising and developing staff, ensuring effective service delivery, operational excellence, and alignment with broader instructional design and technology goals.

Job Responsibilities

• Combine strategic vision and experience to advance our faculty members' and programs' success with using our LMS and courseware ecosystem to enhance teaching and learning School-wide. Tasks include meeting with faculty to identify gaps where technology can enhance their courses and staying abreast of emerging EdTech trends to enhance courseware offerings where appropriate. Demonstrate accountability and expertise in delivering and supporting large-scale services. Serve as a key Wharton School product expert for courseware platforms and tools.
• Advise school leadership on trends, best practices, strategic implementations, and business processes to enhance teaching and learning school-wide.
• Liaise with Wharton Finance & Administration on instructional technology and content licensing budgets.
• Leads and supports direct report(s) tasked with implementing the vision for technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Provide coaching, regular feedback, goal-setting, and day-to-day guidance. Invests in their growth, helps remove obstacles, and foster a positive, inclusive, and high-performing environment. Holds individuals accountable to expectations and standards while ensuring fairness, clarity, and follow-through. When budget allows, supervises or oversees contract staff; covers absences and contributes individually to operations during high-demand periods. Coordinates efforts on these activities with colleagues on the Instructional Design team.
• Serves as a key representative managing relationships with external vendors to improve LMS platforms, content licensing and distribution, teaching tools, and other services. Serves or supervises others as a school-level liaison to vendor advisory councils or industry consortia.
• Partnering with Wharton Computing's Instructional Design team to develop ownership over a sustainable support model to ensure efficient and reliable customer support for academic technologies and services. Provide Instructional Designers with knowledge to use tools within the courseware ecosystem and consult with them on best practices. Oversee efficient policies, practices, and business processes to advance the use of technology supporting world-class instruction at scale.
• Collaborate on administering and curating a shared instructional technology ecosystem at Penn. Represent the School on university-wide teams charged with standardizing and advancing instructional technology.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 5 to 7 years of experience managing technology with demonstrated progression of responsibilities, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Thorough understanding of technology-enhanced learning platforms and tools.
• Demonstrated supervisory and management skills, including budget-related responsibilities, problem-solving, juggling multiple priorities, and meeting deadlines.
• Experience providing authoritative guidance to organizational leaders and/or faculty members regarding best practices in information technology.
• Excellent presentation, writing and customer service skills.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite, HTML/CSS, or other basic content authoring tools.
• Availability to cover gaps in a team's critical service/support responsibilities, including occasional on-call shifts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree
• Expert-level knowledge of at least one learning management system (LMS), such as Canvas (strongly preferred).
• Demonstrated experience leading an IT service/support team or function; prior ITIL-compliant IT service management strongly preferred.
• Prior accomplishments in vendor relations; negotiation experience strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with responsibility-centered management for higher education budgeting; past RCM experience strongly preferred.
• Experience with project management, IT security/privacy best practices, and/or web accessibility; understanding of FERPA, HECVAT, LTI, and VPAT strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with instructional design, learning analytics, and/or organizational strategy.

Job Location - City, State

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Department / School

Wharton School

Pay Range

$120,000.00 - $155,000.00 Annual Rate
Salary offers are made based on the candidate's qualifications, experience, skills, and education as they directly relate to the requirements of the position, and in alignment with salary ranges based on external market data for the job's level. Internal organization and peer data at Penn are also considered.