Director, Professional Services (Data Migration & Conversion and AI & Automation

About this role

About Ellucian

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 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, including data-rich tools for 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 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

About the Opportunity

Ellucian is seeking an experienced Director, Professional Services to lead the global Data Migration & Conversion and AI & Automation capabilities within Professional Services. This role owns the strategy, operating model, people, delivery readiness, methodology, tooling, customer outcomes, and operational performance of these practices. The Director will turn proven delivery experience, regional innovation, and emerging technologies into consistent, scalable services that improve implementation speed, quality, predictability, and customer value.
The successful candidate will be equally comfortable setting a multi-year capability roadmap, leading managers and technical teams, guiding complex customer programs, and translating operations into measurable financial and delivery outcomes. This leader will partner across Professional Services, Product, Engineering, Cloud, Support, Security, Sales, Finance, Enablement, and regional teams to create a globally aligned model while preserving the strongest lessons and assets developed close to customers.
Where You Will Make an Impact
Practice Strategy and Portfolio Leadership

• Own and communicate the global strategy, roadmap, priorities, and operating model for Data Migration & Conversion and AI & Automation within Professional Services.

• Define a coherent portfolio of services, accelerators, reference architectures, reusable components, templates, runbooks, and implementation guidance that can be applied consistently across regions and customer engagement models.

• Translate proven regional practices and customer delivery lessons into a scalable global methodology and tooling strategy; ensure valuable local capabilities are preserved, assessed, and incorporated into the official model where appropriate.

• Establish clear intake, prioritization, investment, build-versus-buy, and lifecycle decisions for migration tooling, AI use cases, software automation, RPA, intelligent document processing, and related platforms.

• Represent the practices in annual planning, executive reviews, strategic partnerships, and major cross-functional initiatives.

Data Migration and Conversion Leadership

• Lead the teams responsible for migration discovery, source-data assessment, extraction, mapping, transformation, loading, validation, reconciliation, testing, dress rehearsals, cutover support, and post-load verification.

• Set global standards for repeatable, controlled, and auditable migration delivery, including quality gates, data validation, test-data management, security, privacy, and customer readiness.

• Advance the next generation of data-conversion tooling through standardized extract templates, reusable mappings, code repositories, knowledge bases, automation, and AI-assisted mapping and transformation workflows.

• Create mechanisms to capture gold-standard conversion assets and subject-matter expertise, treat mappings and migration logic as managed intellectual property, and continuously improve them through delivery feedback.

• Measure and improve time, cost, throughput, quality, and predictability by migration domain and customer; reduce avoidable defects and post-go-live escalations.

AI, Software Automation, and RPA Leadership

• Lead customer-facing and internal automation capabilities spanning AI-assisted process optimization, software development, UiPath-based RPA, ServiceNow automation, intelligent document processing, APIs, and agentic or knowledge-based solutions.

• Own the automation opportunity pipeline from process discovery and feasibility assessment through architecture, development, testing, deployment, adoption, support, and value realization.

• Ensure solutions are secure, maintainable, well documented, reusable, and aligned with responsible-AI, data-governance, compliance, and enterprise architecture expectations.

• Establish Agile delivery practices and portfolio visibility through Jira or equivalent tools, including a consolidated backlog, transparent priorities, delivery metrics, and clear accountability.

• Scale an AI & Automation Center of Excellence that increases throughput, reduces dependence on scarce senior subject-matter experts, and develops sustainable global and nearshore talent.

People Care and Organizational Capability

• Lead, coach, and develop managers, technical leads, consultants, developers, and migration practitioners; create clarity of purpose, accountability, and collaboration across a distributed global team.

• Define organization design, role expectations, competency models, career paths, succession plans, certification priorities, and targeted enablement for data, AI, automation, software, and RPA disciplines.

• Build a culture that moves with urgency, learns openly, shares knowledge, and builds to scale while maintaining strong engineering and consulting discipline.

• Own workforce and capacity planning, hiring, onboarding, performance management, team health, contractor and partner…