Director of Technology & Information Systems

Schedule: 12-month administrative appointment 

Function: Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer, this administrative role is responsible for providing strategic vision and leadership for the planning, development, direction, implementation and administration of technology and information systems at Cheshire Academy. 

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develop a shared vision for technology and learning by aligning the school’s use of technology with the mission, vision, and philosophy of its programs and operations 

• Work with the Academic Office and faculty to facilitate their vision for the use of technology in teaching and learning at the school through an Academic Technology Plan. 

• Engage faculty members in curricular planning, experimentation, and understanding how to integrate technology to enhance their classes. 

• Create faculty training in the opportunities for the use of technology at the school 

• Work with students to enhance their learning experience through the use of technology 

• As a leader, demonstrate success by promoting a customer-centric technology environment. 

• As a manager, guide, motivate, develop, and regularly evaluate all employees and consultants of the technology department. 

• Effectively manage and prioritize the demand for technology department services through collaboration and communication with key stakeholders throughout the Academy 

• Maintain open lines of communication with faculty, staff, students, and parents to ensure needs are addressed and issues are resolved in a timely manner. 

• Evaluate information technologies, develop detailed IT option proposals, and make recommendations to achieve Cheshire Academy’s vision for teaching and learning, and the effective and efficient operation of the school. 

• Manage the development, implementation, installation, and operation of information systems, Internet services, telecommunications, local area networks, remote access solutions, security, and disaster recovery day-to-day operation of the school’s computer and telephone network in support of administrative and academic programs of the school

• Establish, plan, and administer the goals and services of the technology department on an ongoing basis. 

• Oversees and manages the work of the Associate Director of Infrastucture and the Associate Director of Information Systems and Academic Technology. 

• Develop and maintain standard operating policies and procedures with a concern for bringing best practices of technology use to the Academy 

• Provide leadership in showcasing technology within the community 

• Research vendors, secure bids, negotiate contracts, and manage consultants, technical personnel and vendors of information systems services and products. 

• Develop and manage the technology department’s operating and capital budgets working with the CFO 

• Respond to major network outages and failures on a 24/7 basis through facilitation and utilization of IT staff and contracted vendors. (be available, reachable, work remotely...) 

Skills and Abilities:

• Strategic and hands-on administration, development, integration and maintenance of a student information system (SIS), preferably Blackbaud K12; in-bound marketing, email programs, Raiser’s Edge and Financial Edge  

• Strategic and hands-on technical administration of a CRM such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SAP, etc. 

• Ability to understand technical subject matter while being able to translate those concepts into non-jargon-based, minimally-technical concepts for administration, faculty, and staff. 

• Experience with supporting and collaborating with senior staff and executive-level leadership. 

• High-level troubleshooting skills and application of logic in order to solve complex problems. 

• Ability to demonstrate an awareness of business functions of Admissions, Advancement, and Marketing & Communications in order to successfully collaborating with and support those mission-critical areas is preferred 

• Ability to demonstrate an awareness of and/or direct hand-on experience with marketing automation platforms such as Pardot or Hubspot in the effort to support Admission, Advancement and Marketing & Communications initiatives as well direct hand-on administration experience with Salesforce Lightning, Informatica Cloud, and TargetX is preferred.

• Conceptual understanding of implementations of Windows Servers, VMWare, Veeam or similar backup platforms, Disaster Recovery planning, Business Process Engineering, Basic Network Switching, DHCP and DNS preferred 

Education and Work Experience:

• Bachelor's degree with 5-7 years of progressive experience with Infomation systems (MIS) and/or IT administration in a school environment. Master's degree preferred.

• Supervisory/Managerial experience is required.

• Project management experience preferred.