Assistant Director of Data Management – Office of Institutional Research | Fixed-term for 3 years

Position Summary:

UAE nationals are encouraged to apply

A University seeks to appoint an Assistant Director of Data Management.

The Assistant Director of Data Management will perform advanced data science and solution architecture tasks to support data-driven monitoring across key domains such as student, personnel, research, education, and administrative outcomes. Key responsibilities include the design, maintenance, automation, and accuracy assurance of complex longitudinal databases and data repositories. This position requires the delivery of consistent, accurate, timely, and reproducible database and reporting solutions to support short-term decision-making needs, long-term planning and evaluation exercises, and accountability and compliance submissions.

Key Responsibilities:

Data Management and Reporting

• Data Processes: Streamline and automate the compilation, merging, cleaning, manipulation, organization, and maintenance of data extracted from campus (and/or external) ERP systems, applications, and/or websites to serve current and future departmental and institutional reporting needs
• Report Generation: Generate automated tabular, graphical, and/or advanced analytical reports
  
  
  

Data Integrity and Quality

• Maintain Data Integrity: Independently review, verify, reconcile, and update databases to ensure data accuracy, trustworthiness, and completeness
• Ensure Data Quality: Support data quality assurance by conducting validation, diagnostics, cleaning exercises, and audits to verify data accuracy; identify and diagnose inconsistencies and/or general quality issues across analytical systems of record
  
  
  

Optimize Data Analysis and Access

• Standardize Data Structures: Organize data repositories into a unified relational schema to support reporting, and analysis
• Enable Self-Service Data Access: Provide end users with tools to extract, transform, process, and/or analyze data independently, including capabilities for live interactive data exploration
  
  
  

Metadata Documentation

• Procedures: Create (and maintain) detailed documentation (and/or training materials) to ensure that procedures for reproducing data, variable transformations, and overall reports are transparent, verifiable, and reliable
• Database Structures: Create (and maintain) documentation on database structures, and the formats in which elements are maintained
• Codebooks and Dictionaries: Create (and maintain) codebooks that thoroughly describe database contents – including variables, transformations, storage types, etc
• Data Mappings: Create (and maintain) mappings or cross-walks of various databases and/or tables to illustrate relationships and facilitate data integrations
  
  
  

Other Activities/Duties

• Oversee the work of one direct report
• Website development, content management, application/tool creation
• Develop and sustain effective relationships to better understand data and reporting needs, identify synergies, and enhance improvements/efficiencies
• Collaboration with academic and business unit information systems personnel and IT to:
• further ensure the quality, validity, and accessibility of institutional data; and
• resolve data discrepancies and clarify reporting procedures
• Collaborate with IT on technical matters related to departmental: accounts, licenses, software acquisition/installation/updates, websites, web applications, servers, databases, etc.
• Pursue data science-oriented professional development, and stay updated on current analytical trends in higher education
• The above statements outline the essential responsibilities and requirements of the role (and are not an exhaustive list of duties). There will invariably be a need for the incumbent to assist with various ad-hoc accountability and/or compliance informational requests, coordinate special projects, and undertake other tasks that are logically related to (or necessary for) the position
  
  

Qualifications:

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree
  
  
  

Preferred Education:

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Doctoral degree in an analytical field (i.e., Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Business Analytics, Operations Research, Information Systems, Economics, Data Science, Computational Social Science)
  
  
  

Required Experience:

• At least six (6) years of related post-baccalaureate professional experience in a formal organizational setting focused on ERP systems, data warehouses, database management, programming, automation, APIs, visualization, web applications, analytics
• Excellent English written and verbal skills (and advanced Microsoft Word and PowerPoint experience) to communicate effectively across groups and levels in an effective and collaborative manner
• Advanced Excel proficiencies (VLOOKUP, macros, pivoting capabilities, conditional statements, graphics, analysis modules, etc.)
• Experience with collaboration and web content management applications
• Demonstrable experience with web forms
• Experience with metrics development
• Understanding of basic univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics
• Familiarity with implementation and maintenance of ETL methodologies and solutions, business objects, query, and reporting functionalities in ERP systems
• Strong and demonstrable skills in the management and manipulation of large and complex relational databases
• Strong understanding of data warehouse concepts/principles, and structured/unstructured databases
• Knowledge of data validation techniques
• Strong familiarity with web scraping, web crawling, debugging sites, and APIs
• Experience with browser automation
• Technical expertise with database administration and various development, programming, and writing complex queries (SQL, PL/SQL, NoSQL, .NET, VB, C/C++, Python, Ruby, etc.)
• Programming expertise with web development frameworks, web-based service technologies, and web programming languages (Java, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML5, XML, JSON, Ajax, etc.)
• Experience with Unix/Linux operating systems, shells, and tools such as grep, find, wget, awk, etc
• Highly detailed-oriented, commitment to data accuracy and consistency, and superior organizational and project management skills; self-initiated, highly motivated, flexible, and able to work effectively both independently and collaboratively in a multicultural team environment; work productively on multiple tasks under pressure with competing and inflexible deadlines; distill complex data and information requirements from a wide spectrum of requestors into valuable end-products; maintaining composure in an environment of constant quality improvement; and ability to exercise good judgment and discretion when navigating complex situations and with confidential information
  
  
  

Preferred Experience:

• Oracle Certified Professional; Certified Professional in Python Programming; Tableau Server Certified Associate
• At least ten (10) years of related post-baccalaureate professional experience in a formal organizational setting focused on ERP systems, data warehouses, database management, programming, automation, APIs, visualization, web applications, analytics
• At least four (4) years of related professional experience in a university environment and/or setting, and a special knowledge of academic programs
• At least two (2) years of related professional experience in an institutional research, effectiveness, quality assurance, information management, analytics, planning, or similar Office and/or comparable experience in higher education research a university environment and/or setting, and a special knowledge of academic programs
• Understanding of, and commitment to, the university’s vision, mission, and values
• Commitment to the university’s values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging; demonstrated experience with, and understanding of, the broad diversity of the university community (students, faculty, staff, and others)
• Familiarity with databases and systems and deep understanding of linkages and dependencies across institutional student, faculty, research, financial, HR, and other data
• Working knowledge of MoE’s CHEDS framework, ADEK’s UScore Platform, IPEDS, Common Dataset
• Familiarity with data governance and data privacy platforms (Collibra, OneTrust, etc.)
• Understanding of personal data privacy-oriented regulations
• Demonstrable Oracle business intelligence reporting tools and information builder experience
• Familiarity with administration, management, and maintenance of Tableau Server and Tableau Online including user and group management; report publishing and distribution; and data extraction scheduling
• Experience with Generative AI
• Experience in building self-updating real-time front-end components using HTTP/REST API calls and the WebSocket protocol
• Machine Learning (PyTorch, Google Cloud AutoML, Apache Mahout, etc.)
• Knowledge of Natural Language Processing, Regular Expressions, Robotic Process Automation, and Pattern Recognition/Identification/Matching
• Experience designing, installing, and configuring new/existing Unix/Linux systems; Unix/Linux environment troubleshooting, remediation, etc.
• Advanced data visualization tools (D3, Apache Superset, Shiny, ggplot2, matplotlib, plotly, etc.)
• Experience with statistical analysis software (i.e., Stata, R, SAS, etc.)
• Experience with mathematical open source packages (i.e., NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, etc.)
  
  
  

Additional Information:

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