Analytics Operations Lead

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:
 

Grade: Professional 312

Pay Range: $106,700.00 - $165,400.00

Job Description

Job Profile Summary

The Institutional Analytics and Research (IAR) team supports and enables most WGU teams, departments, and colleges to make data-informed decisions that lead to better student outcomes. Our analysts, scientists, researchers, and managers are distributed across several teams: Faculty Experience Analytics, Institutional Research, Learning Analytics, Outreach Analytics, and Student Success Analytics.

The Analytics Operations Lead manages the entire lifecycle of cross-functional projects and programs, analytical processes, initiatives to increase data literacy and analytics adoption, and other strategic initiatives of high complexity, applying exceptional organization and communication skills, systems-thinking, and understanding of the human, process, and technology factors that influence analytics and research efforts. Establishes strong relationships with technical specialists and leaders across IAR, Data Engineering, MLOps, Colleges, Institutional Portfolio Management, and other university departments. Acts as catalysts and multipliers of the team’s talent and impact, displaying high levels of accountability, and are highly oriented to outcomes, generating better insights and decisions that help the university enable extraordinary student outcomes.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities

• Owns roadmaps for cross-functional programs and initiatives of high complexity, such as the evolution of executive reporting, yearly operational and financial planning, and others.
• Organizes the day-to-day work in highly complex analytics projects, programs, and initiatives, from project inception to solution delivery, with complete autonomy.  This includes assembling, directing, coordinating, and assigning responsibilities to project team members across all phases (initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/controlling, and closing).
• Leads and facilitates forums like stand-up meetings, requirement discovery sessions, backlog grooming sessions, retro sessions, executive updates, steering committees, etc.
• Maintains accurate status records of tasks and activities using adequate project management tools (e.g., JIRA, ServiceNow, Smartsheet).  Proactively measures results, velocity, and impact, proposing course correction measures when adequate.
• Leads communications in highly complex analytics projects, programs, and initiatives, ensuring that all relevant parties – project team, contributors, leaders, stakeholders, sponsors – stay informed throughout every project phase, from inception to delivery.  Adapts messaging and style to fit diverse audiences and situations.
• Collaborates with IAR leaders in defining project communication standards across IAR, creating artifacts, and defining practices that drive transparency about initiative status, timelines, dependencies, and impact.
• Executes demand intake, triage, and other activities that lead to quick, transparent, and adequate prioritization and capacity management.
• Collaborates with IAR leaders to define and improve the organization’s demand management processes and increase adoption and compliance.
• Defines and owns project and initiative backlogs and acts as the point of contact for new demand, interfacing between project customers/requirements owners and project teams.
• Assesses the complexity of the most frequent types of require