Associate Vice President for Enterprise Solutions & Enabling Technologies

About the role

The Associate Vice President (AVP) for Enterprise Solutions & Enabling Technologies (ESET) leads a newly formed team within Virginia Tech's Division of Information Technology. This team is responsible for the university's enterprise applications, data systems, and reporting platforms, supporting academic, administrative, and AI-enabled services.

Responsibilities

• Fosters high-performing and agile teams dedicated to technical excellence and exceptional customer service, and fluid customer experiences.
• Develops a deep technical understanding of the entire enterprise systems and solutions environment.
• Ensures cohesiveness, resiliency, redundancy, and reliability of the enterprise solutions and data ecosystem.
• Manages the ESET team and resources to achieve goals, objectives, and key results.
• Builds strong and collaborative partnerships with key stakeholders across the university.
• Expands platform capabilities to support AI adoption in university operations and business processes.
• Creates data strategies and contributes to ongoing efforts to mature data governance to meet current needs and enable effective, secure use of AI.
• Upgrades the University’s data and reporting technologies to improve integrations and data access.
• Maintains an enterprise applications roadmap that leverages modern design principles that meet current and future university needs.
• Supports the ongoing modernization of Virginia Tech’s student information, finance, human resources, and other major enterprise platform technologies.

Requirements

• Master’s degree or bachelor's degree with relevant certifications in AI, enterprise or data architecture combined with multiple years of leadership experience of a similar enterprise solutions portfolio.
• Significant experience in data governance, data strategy, enterprise application management, enterprise architecture, data warehousing, and/or AI adoption.
• Demonstrated success, as senior manager, managing budgets and leading large, high performing IT development and operations teams.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to apply technology to solve business problems, evaluate emerging tools and standards, and develop user- and business-driven technology plans—with a working understanding of software development lifecycles, business process analysis, and process re-engineering.
• Experience leading organizational and technology change initiatives, with a strong emphasis on relationship-building, collaboration, and shared stewardship.
• Commitment to continuous improvement, including establishing and reporting on key performance metrics.
• Exceptional communication skills—written, verbal, and presentational—with the ability to engage technical and non-technical audiences alike.
• Demonstrated ability to build effective, collegial relationships across all levels of a diverse and distributed organization, with a commitment to fostering an inclusive campus community.
• Demonstrated ability to resolve conflict, build consensus, and influence without direct authority.

Qualifications and Leadership Experience

• Master’s degree or bachelor's degree with relevant certifications in AI, enterprise or data architecture combined with multiple years of leadership experience of a similar enterprise solutions portfolio may substitute for a master's degree.
• Significant experience in data governance, data strategy, enterprise application management, enterprise architecture, data warehousing, and/or AI adoption.
• Demonstrated success, as senior manager, managing budgets and leading large, high performing IT development and operations teams.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to apply technology to solve business problems, evaluate emerging tools and standards, and develop user- and business-driven technology plans—with a working understanding of software development lifecycles, business process analysis, and process re-engineering.
• Experience leading organizational and technology change initiatives, with a strong emphasis on relationship-building, collaboration, and shared stewardship.
• Commitment to continuous improvement, including establishing and reporting on key performance metrics.
• Exceptional communication skills—written, verbal, and presentational—with the ability to engage technical and non-technical audiences alike.
• Demonstrated ability to build effective, collegial relationships across all levels of a diverse and distributed organization, with a commitment to fostering an inclusive campus community.
• Demonstrated ability to resolve conflict, build consensus, and influence without direct authority.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with budgeting, financial planning, and business operations.
• Broad technical familiarity across the enterprise application and data portfolios, including database administration, application development, and integration services.
• Experience in a large, complex IT environment, preferably in higher education, including familiarity with shared governance models.
• Familiarity with agentic AI, machine learning, and/or robotic process automation (RPA) as applied to enterprise systems.
• A visionary perspective on technology—able to identify possibilities and opportunities that others may overlook.