- Job Type: Officer of Administration
- Regular/Temporary: Regular
- Hours Per Week: 35
- Building: Low Library
- Salary Range: $110,000-$130,000
The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialty, and training. The above hiring range represents the University's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting.
Position Summary
Reporting to the Senior Associate Provost for the Office of Planning and Institutional Research (OPIR), the Director of Data Management and Reporting leads OPIR's data management and reporting efforts. The Director works closely with the OPIR team to identify, coordinate, and prioritize needs and manage related projects. This individual will also coordinate data and reporting efforts across the University.
The position will oversee activities such as completing mandatory federal and state reporting, compiling and analyzing data for university decision-making, and overseeing external reporting needs of schools. The Director will have the experience and skills needed to extract and manipulate complex data sets, and organize data into meaningful reports that can be acted upon for internal and external constituencies. The Director is responsible for overseeing complex projects to ensure the accuracy and consistency of data through the application of effective data management, security, stewardship, and governance processes. The work involves accessing and extracting data from the university's administrative data systems, including enrollment, employee, salary, tuition, finance, financial aid, research, and facilities, and preparing these data in an appropriate format for reporting or analysis.
More generally, the Director will support and advance the office's core activity of capturing, analyzing, and interpreting data on faculty, students, staff, and other critical institutional information used in managing the university and in making decisions about policies and goals for the university. The Director will represent OPIR with key stakeholders across the institution, lead efforts implement best practices promoting data integrity, governance and security, and ensure that system performance supports timely and accurate reporting.
Responsibilities
Data Management, Integrity and Security
- Responsible for design, development, maintenance, and oversight of OPIR databases in which data extracts are housed, including ETL, SQL, and stored procedures in MS SQL Server.
- Develop and maintain processes that adhere to data governance principles in the management of the OPIR data warehouse, including data security and quality control procedures for extracting queries and for storing data.
- Monitor and analyze the reporting definitions and rules necessary for the technical design, building, and testing of database tables.
- Maintain documentation of data sources and comprehensive data dictionaries for the OPIR data warehouse.
- Apply rigor and domain knowledge to exploring options and deciding on an action plan to more effectively leverage data assets for decision support and reporting.
- Work with OPIR team to formalize data governance used in reporting.
- Collaborate with other university offices such as CUIT and Human Resources, as needed.
Reporting
- Supervise completion of Federal and state reporting for which OPIR is responsible.
- Supervise updating publicly available data such as the Statistical Abstract, Columbia FACTS, and the Common Data Sets annually.
- Build and evaluate complex data sets.
- Establish data requirements and develop, produce, and maintain queries and reports to support OPIR reporting and data analysis needs. Develop new analytics BI solutions; support and maintain and improve existing solutions.
- Work to automate OPIR reports and their distribution.
- Generate ad hoc reports in response to requests for information about the university and its schools from internal and external sources.
- Present information in a clear, concise, and understandable format.
- Manage maintenance and updates for OPIR website. Help coordinate semi-regular reviews of the website.
Leadership & Strategic Planning
- Serve as an effective liaison with important stakeholders, including Schools and IT.
- Work with Senior Associate Provost to create opportunities for OPIR to work proactively, identify issues and develop strategic initiatives that provide innovative ways to support decision-making and policy development by university leadership.
- Keep current with trends in higher education and practices, particularly on best practices regarding knowledge management in colleges and universities, including building data warehouses, developing institutional reporting strategies, and providing decision support.
- Recommend standardized practices in developing data solutions.
- Explore new techniques and technologies in BI to generate new ideas and insightful analytics.
- Support other team members through organized training and ongoing knowledge transfer.
Minimum Qualifications
- Masters and/or its equivalent Degree in social science, information or data science, statistics, computer science, business analytics, or related discipline.
- Five to six years of relevant experience in business intelligence, data management and reporting.
- Demonstrated success navigating a complex work environment, preferably in higher education.
- Demonstrated knowledge of and experience with relational database concepts, MS SQL Server, SQL, data modeling, and data warehousing techniques. Proven ability to ensure data security.
- Data visualization and reporting tools experience (PowerBI, Tableau, Oracle Analytics Cloud, or similar) as well as the ability to manipulate, transform, or merge datasets using tools such as Excel, R, or python is necessary.
- Ability to prioritize and manage multiple tasks and projects under short and changing deadlines, while ensuring accuracy.
- Must show a willingness to work independently, demonstrate creativity and initiative, have excellent organization skills, attention to detail, and a sense of humor.
- Must be able to communicate complex technical matters effectively to diverse audiences.
- The ability to mentor/train team members is necessary.
- Must be able to exercise sound judgment, strategic thinking, discretion, and tact in a highly confidential and professional setting.
Preferred Qualifications
- Higher education experience is strongly preferred.
- Familiarity with enterprise-level reporting tools is an asset.
Notes: Finalists will be expected to demonstrate MS SQL Server proficiency.
To apply, please submit a cover letter and resume.
Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran
Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.