Description:

About the job

About Ellucian

Ellucian is a global market leader in education technology. We power innovation for higher education, partnering with more than 2,800 customers across 50 countries and serving over 20 million students. Ellucian's AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, from student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners, and user community of more than 45,000 provide best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

Values Rooted in Purpose

We embrace the power to lead, the courage to innovate, and the determination to grow. At our core, we believe in humanizing our approach, recognizing that our people are our greatest strength. With a shared vision of transformation, we endeavor to shape a brighter future for higher education.

About The Opportunity

The Vice President of Professional Services will lead Ellucians global PS organization through a critical modernization journey as we continue shifting from legacy on-premise delivery models to cloud-based, agile service methodologies. This leader will define and execute the strategy that elevates delivery performance, increases automation, and enables seamless, customer-focused service execution across the entire lifecycle.

This is a high-impact role responsible for transforming operational efficiency, maturing our delivery workflows, and ensuring our teams have the tools, processes, and frameworks needed to support institutions worldwide. The ideal candidate brings enterprise software experience coupled with a passion for operational excellence, innovation, and meaningful outcomes for higher education customers.

You will be joining an amazing team focused on delivering world-class, customer-focused solutions as part of the leading cloud software company for higher education!

Where you will make an impact

- Lead and evolve Ellucians global Professional Services organization, ensuring scalable, predictable, high-quality delivery.

- Drive the transformation from on-premise, waterfall delivery approaches to agile, cloud-based, and DevSecOps-enabled service models.

- Modernize operational processes by building continuous integration, deployment, planning, and automated delivery workflows.

- Remove systemic blockers and inefficiencies to create seamless flow from development testing deployment adoption.

- Strengthen alignment across Product, Engineering, Customer Success, and Sales to deliver cohesive, high-value customer experiences.

- Implement operational excellence frameworks and delivery metrics that guide organizational maturity and improve outcomes.

- Serve as an executive partner to customers, ensuring Professional Services accelerates value realization and long-term success.

What You Will Bring

- Experience leading multi-regional Professional Services organizations within enterprise ERP, SIS, or CRM environments.

- Proven history transforming legacy, on-premise, waterfall delivery models into agile, cloud-first operating environments.

- Strong understanding of end-to-end delivery flow from development to testing to deployment, with demonstrated optimization success.

- Expertise in establishing continuous integration, deployment, planning, and workflow automation processes.

- Ability to diagnose and remove internal operational constraints (self-inflicted blockers) to improve throughput and predictability.

- Demonstrated success modernizing manual processes and resolving systemic delivery inefficiencies.

- Executive-level leadership skills with the ability to inspire teams, influence cross-functional partners, and engage with customers.

- Strong communication, stakeholder management, and change leadership capabilities.

- Experience driving adoption of cloud-based delivery methodologies and DevSecOps-aligned practices.

- Strategic mindset with an ability to translate modernization goals into executable, measurable outcomes.

Bonus to have

- Experience in higher education technology or other mission-driven, regulated industries.

- Background in large-scale SaaS transformation initiatives.

- Prior leadership in organizations transitioning from legacy ERPs to cloud-native platforms.