Description
Sr Director, Enterprise Applications & Operations
Remote or hybrid to Wayne, PA or Naperville, IL
Role Overview
The Senior Director of Enterprise Applications & Operations is a visionary leader who owns the strategy, design, and delivery of Frontline Education’s internal enterprise applications, analytics platforms, data governance, and cloud / IT operations. Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, this role leads a team of BI analysts, data engineers, architects, and system specialists to build robust, scalable, and AI-powered data solutions that drive insight, efficiency, and sustainable processes across the business.
Key Responsibilities :
1. Strategic Leadership & AI Thought Leadership
Define and drive the Enterprise Applications & Operations roadmap, with a strong focus on AI / ML enablement, ensuring alignment with Frontline’s strategic goals and corporate data strategy.
Own Frontline’s internal data architecture and availability — identifying opportunities for predictive analytics, optimizing decision-making, and automating workflows.
Champion best practices in data governance, ethical AI usage, model lifecycle management, and bias mitigation to ensure responsible adoption of emerging technologies.
2. Sustainable Workflow Innovation
Lead the design and implementation of automated, AI-enabled workflows for ETL, data cleansing, reporting, and system integrations—reducing manual effort and technical debt.
Establish metrics and monitoring for workflow efficiency, model performance, governance compliance, and data quality, iterating to create self-sustaining pipelines.
Collaborate with DevOps / SRE teams to embed observability and continuous-learning loops into data and application lifecycles.
3. Team Management & Culture
Build and mentor a high-performing, cross-functional team of BI Analysts, Data Engineers, Systems Architects, and AI specialists.
Foster a culture of experimentation, continuous learning, and “fail-fast, learn-fast” innovation.
Oversee talent planning, performance reviews, and professional development to upskill teams in cloud-native and AI technologies.
4. Enterprise Systems & Data Architecture
Own the design, deployment, and maintenance of critical platforms :
BI & Analytics : Power BI, SSAS, Azure Synapse, Snowflake
Data Engineering : ETL / ELT (Tray.io, Azure Data Factory), data lake architecture, real-time streaming (Kafka, Event Hubs)
Integrations & CRM : Salesforce, REST / GraphQL APIs, iPaaS solutions
Ensure systems are built with governance controls – encryption, role-based access, privacy handling, auditing, logging, and more – and are designed for continuous integration of new AI tooling.
5. Operational Excellence & Performance
Drive end-to-end delivery of data solutions : roadmap planning, agile project management, sprint execution, and release management.
Improve monitoring, anomaly detection, and governance checkpoints for data pipelines and application performance.
Define and track KPIs for system reliability, data accuracy, governance compliance, user adoption, and workflow throughput.
6. Cross-Functional Collaboration
Serve as the liaison to Strategy, Finance, and more to translate business goals into technical requirements and deliver actionable insights.
Partner on SaaS go-to-market and financial forecasting to enforce corporate metric definitions and ensure a single source of truth for key metrics.
Ensure all systems and AI initiatives comply with regulatory standards and internal security protocols, driving governance awareness across the organization.
Qualifications & Experience
Required :
10+ years in leadership roles spanning enterprise applications, BI, data engineering, or operations technology.
Proven track record driving AI / ML or advanced analytics initiatives in an enterprise setting.
Expertise in data architecture, ETL / ELT, cloud data platforms (Snowflake, Azure Synapse, AWS Redshift).
Hands-on experience with BI tools (Power BI, SSAS) and ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, Azure ML).
Strong program and project management discipline, with success delivering complex, cross-functional technology programs.
Exceptional people leader : coaching, mentoring, and scaling high-impact engineering and analytics teams.
Preferred :
Master’s or advanced certification in Data Science, AI, Computer Science, Data Governance, or related field.
Experience with data science lifecycle management (MLOps), generative AI, and model governance.
Background in SaaS business operations, subscription renewals, and financial analytics.
Familiarity with Informatica, Tray.io, Salesforce APEX, and cloud-native DevOps practices.
Core Competencies
Strategic & Innovative Mindset : Envisions and executes AI-enabled data strategies.
Analytical & Technical Acumen : Deep understanding of modern data architectures and ML pipelines.
Leadership & Communication : Influences and aligns stakeholders at all levels.
Service-Oriented & Collaborative : Champions “we over me” servant-leadership.
Operational Rigor : Delivers reliability, security, governance, and scalability in fast-paced environments.
Who we are :
Frontline Education is a pioneer of school administration software purpose-built for K-12 districts. We provide innovative, connected solutions for student and special programs, business operations, and human capital management with powerful data and analytics to empower educators and administrators. We earn the trust of K-12 leaders across the U.S. by serving as a consistently high-performing, forthright partner of school districts through every dimension of the company.
Perks of being a Frontliner :
Frontline offers a competitive compensation package including a base salary, rewarding bonus structure, 401k match, and personalized PTO! Our company’s growth has created a promising environment for career advancement and rewarding challenges. We offer a tuition reimbursement program for eligible college credit coursework available to employees depending on their status and length of employment.
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Director Operation • Naperville, IL, US