Associate CIO for Enterprise Platforms and Operations

Associate CIO for Enterprise Platforms and Operations

The Associate CIO for Enterprise Platforms and Operations provides strategic and operational leadership for the university’s core technology environment, including enterprise applications, integrations, infrastructure, network services, telephony, and related enterprise systems. This role is responsible for ensuring that enterprise platforms and supporting systems are reliable, secure, and aligned with institutional priorities.

Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, the Associate CIO serves as a senior leader within IT, driving execution, coordination, and accountability across technical domains while ensuring strong alignment with institutional governance and priorities. This position plays a central role in connecting strategy to delivery, ensuring that technology initiatives are effectively implemented and sustained across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Platforms & Applications

• Provide leadership and oversight for enterprise applications, ensuring stability, performance, and alignment with institutional needs.
• Partner with academic, research, and administrative stakeholders to ensure enterprise systems effectively support teaching, research, and business operations.
• Partner with functional stakeholders to prioritize enhancements, manage system lifecycles, and support long-term platform strategy.
• Ensure enterprise systems are effectively integrated and supported across the technology ecosystem.
• Support institutional readiness for major system initiatives, including ERP and SIS transformation efforts.

Infrastructure, Systems, Network & Telephony Operations

• Oversee infrastructure, network, and telephony services to ensure high availability, resilience, and scalability.
• Lead the evolution of voice and communications platforms, including cloud-based and unified communications solutions.
• Establish and enforce operational standards across systems, networks, and communications environments.
• Ensure coordination across application, infrastructure, and network layers to support reliable service delivery.
• Ensure infrastructure and platform capabilities effectively support research computing needs, including performance, scalability, and integration with enterprise services.
• Partner with campus Public Safety and other stakeholders to support, modernize, and progressively align access control, CCTV, and related systems with enterprise IT standards and operations.
• Partner with Information Security to align operational practices with security and risk management requirements.

Risk, Resilience & Incident Leadership

• Establish and maintain enterprise IT resilience strategies, including business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) planning, testing, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure critical systems and services have appropriate redundancy, recovery objectives (RTO/RPO), and failover capabilities.
• Lead IT operational response during major incidents, outages, and service disruptions, ensuring clear ownership, coordination, and communication.
• Partner with Information Security on incident response coordination, ensuring alignment between security events and operational recovery.
• Conduct post-incident reviews to identify root causes, drive corrective actions, and strengthen overall resilience.
• Collaborate with institutional leadership to ensure alignment between IT recovery capabilities and broader university continuity planning.

Integration & Enterprise Architecture Alignment

• Ensure effective integration between enterprise systems, enabling seamless data flow and interoperability.
• Promote standards and practices that reduce fragmentation and improve system cohesion.
• Work across teams to align technical implementation with enterprise architecture direction.

Service Delivery & Operational Coordination

• Drive coordination across technical teams to ensure consistent and effective delivery of IT services.
• Remove silos between applications, infrastructure, network, communications, and related technology domains.
• Ensure operational issues are addressed with urgency, ownership, and clear communication.
• Coordinate across teams and stakeholders to ensure services supporting academic, research, and operational functions are delivered consistently and effectively.
• Act as a central point of coordination for complex, cross-functional initiatives and service challenges.

Governance & Institutional Engagement

• Serve as a core IT leader within university governance structures, including ITEC and associated working committees.
• Actively participate in and support governance processes, ensuring that enterprise platforms, operational priorities, and service delivery decisions are aligned with institutional direction.
• Partner with functional and academic leaders to translate governance input into actionable plans and execution.
• Ensure transparency in prioritization, decision-making, and delivery across enterprise systems and operations.
• Provide operational insight and recommendations to inform governance discussions, planning, and investment decisions.

Operational Excellence & Accountability

• Establish clear expectations, metrics, and reporting for system performance, service delivery, and team outcomes.
• Drive a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure consistent execution of work across teams, with visibility into priorities and progress.
• Identify and address operational gaps, risks, and inefficiencies.

Financial & Resource Management

• Oversee budgets and resource allocation across enterprise platforms and operations.
• Manage vendor relationships and ensure effective contract and service oversight.
• Support strategic investment planning aligned with institutional priorities.

Leadership & Organizational Responsibilities

• Provide direct leadership to managers and technical leads across applications, integrations, systems, network, telephony, and related technology functions.
• Foster collaboration across IT functions, including security, client services, academic technology, emerging technologies, and research computing.
• Engage with campus partners across academic, research, and administrative units to ensure alignment between technology services and institutional needs.
• Serve as a key escalation point for operational and service-related issues.
• Ensure alignment and coordination across all IT functional areas to support institutional outcomes.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent combination of education and significant relevant experience.
• Minimum of 15 years of progressively responsible experience in IT, including leadership of enterprise systems, infrastructure, or operations.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple technical domains (applications, infrastructure, networks, integrations, communications platforms, or similar).
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive execution in a complex environment.
• Strong understanding of enterprise systems, IT operations, and service delivery models.
• Experience working with governance structures and senior institutional leadership.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in a related field strongly preferred.
• Extensive relevant experience (typically 20+ years in complex IT environments) may be considered in lieu of an advanced degree.
• Experience in higher education or similar complex, decentralized environments.
• Experience supporting or leading large-scale system implementations (e.g., ERP or SIS transformation).
• Familiarity with modern infrastructure, cloud platforms, unified communications, and related enterprise technologies.

Key skills/competency

• Enterprise Platforms
• IT Operations
• Infrastructure Management
• Network Services
• Telephony Systems
• System Integrations
• IT Governance
• Disaster Recovery
• Service Delivery
• Team Leadership