If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.
Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.
The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.
At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
Job Description
The Senior Manager, Faculty Operations Analytics leads a high-performing team of data analysts, data scientists, and research scientists to drive impactful research and analytics initiatives that directly influence WGU’s faculty operations and student outcomes. This role plays a crucial part in delivering actionable insights and strategic recommendations that inform decision-making across the university, with a primary focus on faculty engagement, academic support, and faculty-driven interventions.
As a key member of the Institutional Analytics and Research team, the Senior Manager is responsible for overseeing the development of tools and processes that enhance the student experience, improve faculty performance, and optimize administrative and academic functions. The Senior Manager ensures that all research and analytics efforts align with WGU’s core results: Completion, Equity, and Return. This role involves collaboration with senior leaders to prioritize initiatives that support university goals and contribute to the ongoing evolution of WGU’s academic and mentoring strategies.
The Senior Manager will lead the team to deliver critical work products on time and to a high standard, ensuring that analytics and insights are effectively communicated to internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, the Senior Manager fosters a culture of continuous improvement and professional growth by staying ahead of trends in data analytics and learning science, ensuring the team’s efforts align with best practices and the evolving needs of the university. Through collaborative leadership and a focus on team development, the Senior Manager will build a team ready to meet the demands of a dynamic and forward-thinking institution.
Primary Responsibilities
Requirement Analysis: Leads and oversees the documentation of research and analytics needs in projects and programs with a student and equity-centered lens, collaborating with peers, cross-functional partners, faculty staff, and leaders. Leads the review and triage of user stories, evaluates their business relevance and priority, and translates them into technical requirements that inform the team’s backlog. Defines requirement analysis best practices and drives their adoption across IAR.
Expectation Management: Sets and manages expectations in cross-functional projects and programs, ensuring realistic goal-setting and effective communication about scope, timelines, outcomes, and dependencies.
Stakeholder Management: Proactively develops strong, trust-based relationships with cross-functional partners that lead to the identification, planning, and execution of projects and programs that contribute to positive student outcomes.
People Management: Leads and manages a Faculty Operations Analytics team of approx. 4-7 team members, overseeing research and analytics projects aimed at enhancing faculty effectiveness and improving student outcomes. Owns resource planning for their team and projects and participates in resource planning at the department level.
Mentoring: Regarded by peers and leaders as a role model. Provides constructive feedback and shares technical and institutional knowledge with others regularly. Collaborates with IAR leadership towards the growth and development of other team members.
Project & Initiative Leadership: Drives tasks, activities, and large-scale, cross-functional projects and programs with high levels of autonomy, confidence, and collaboration with peers and partners. Defines and owns project and program plans and communications, proactively manages dependencies, identifies risks and suitable mitigation strategies, manages resource allocation and capacity, and ensures alignment across the team, leaders, and stakeholders. Breaks down complex goals into concrete tasks and activities. Tracks and reports progress, dependencies, and challenges diligently.
Data Querying & Transformation: Identifies adequate data sources and data sets to evaluate hypotheses and support findings of analytics and research projects and experiments. Collaborates with Data Engineering in developing ETL/ELT processes and data pipelines
Data Visualization & Storytelling: Combines data analysis, visualization, and narrative structures to convey information in compelling ways that instigate deliberate action. Participates in the definition of data visualization standards and best practices and promotes their adoption across IAR and the university.
Communication: Conveys information effectively to peers, partners, senior leaders, and, as projects require, external audiences, using a variety of resources and formats (synchronous and asynchronous, verbal and written) such as e-mails, presentations, meetings, and workshops. Is open and responsive to feedback to improve work. Defines and owns (in collaboration with communications teams, as relevant) communication plans for complex, high-visibility projects and programs that span several university departments.
Reporting: Lead the development and management of reporting systems for faculty engagement, faculty performance metrics, and academic processes. Provide training and support to faculty leaders on data literacy and the use of reporting platforms.
Knowledge Management & Documentation: Creates and organizes information about processes, projects, operations, data assets, and insights, making it accessible in ways that increase the university's knowledge and efficiency. Writes and interprets technical documentation (e.g., Entity-Relationship, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical data models). Plays a leading role in continuously improving the university's data management platforms (e.g., data dictionaries, catalogs, etc.), collaborating with Data Engineering and other data and analytics teams.
Functional Acumen: Expert in the university's most relevant KPIs, the drivers that affect them, and plays a leading role in their definition and tracking to ensure we measure what matters and drive operational accountability. Applies sound judgment, systems-thinking, and analytical skills to assess risks, perform root-cause analyses, make recommendations, and drive cross-functional decisions that contribute to the achievement of the university's objectives. Leads strategic planning and operational excellence initiatives across IAR.
Product Data Integration: Collaborate with Product Managers to design data integration strategies for systems used by Instructors, Mentors, faculty leaders, and ancillary users (e.g., Accreditation, Program Development). Oversee analysts working on data integration projects, ensuring alignment with Product, Data Architecture, and Data Engineering teams.
University Representation: Represent WGU at national and international conferences, promoting the university’s thought leadership in education research. Work closely with executive leadership and cross-functional teams to ensure research objectives and projects are aligned with WGU's overall strategic direction. Offer technical guidance on research methods and analytical toolsets, ensuring robust and accurate outcomes. Identify and develop new research opportunities that support WGU’s direction to individualize and improve the student experience. Perform other senior-level research and administrative duties as needed.
Qualifications
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
Team Leadership: 4+ years of experience leading teams of approx. 4-6 people and creating healthy work environments conducive to collaboration, learning, accountability, and high performance. Experienced in the strategic and tactical responsibilities of a people leadership role, including capacity planning, hiring, onboarding, coaching, providing feedback, supporting the definition of individual development plans, appraising performance, and succession planning.
7+ years of experience in a related research field, particularly within education or human systems, with a focus on data science, experimental design, and qualitative research.
Goal setting: Experienced in defining team and individual objectives utilizing OKRs, SMART metrics, and similar frameworks.
Project Execution: Comfortable with common project management methodologies and frameworks (e.g., Waterfall, Agile, SDLC). Experienced using tools like JIRA, asana, Trello, and similar to organize and track tasks and projects. Able to manage multiple research and analytics projects simultaneously.
In-depth knowledge of a field such as learning science, research design, statistics, behavioral science, behavioral economics, education psychology, or related field.
Knowledge of data ETL procedures and systems.
Advanced knowledge of machine learning analytics, including predictive modeling, cluster analysis, and AI applications in data analytics.
Expertise in defining and conducting original scientific research. Experience managing grants and grant-funded research related to faculty operations is preferred.
Proficiency in data manipulation using languages like SQL and Python, and visualization tools such as PowerBI or Tableau.
Experience with both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
Proven ability to translate complex research findings into practical insights and communicate them effectively to diverse audiences.
A collaborative mindset, thriving in fast-paced environments and able to foster strong relationships within the team and with external partners.
Ability to influence institutional strategy through research insights and data-driven recommendations.
Self-organization: Performs with very high levels of autonomy, reliability, self-direction, and with a bias for action. Manages conflicting and concurrent activities with minimal need of supervision.
Continuous Learning: Works actively to improve own skills and knowledge through internal and external, formal and informal, structured and unstructured learning. Is a lifelong learner and embodies a growth mindset. Stays abreast of innovative developments in their area work and plays an active role in deploying them at IAR and the university.
Proficient in the MS Office suite, including advanced Excel knowledge.
Proficient in flowchart and diagramming tools like Miro, Visio, Lucidchart, and similar applications.
Education
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant research or analytics discipline (e.g., Educational Psychology, Data Science, Economics).
Preferred Qualifications
Master’s degree or PhD in a relevant research or analytics discipline (e.g., Education, Psychology, Data Science, Economics).
Experience in lieu of education
Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager.
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Position & Application Details
Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.
Additional Information
Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.
Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.
Equal Opportunity Employer: We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. #DEI