Vice President, Information Services (IS) and Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Job Type:

Vice President, Information Services (IS) and Chief Information Officer (CIO)

The problems facing humanity are daunting. As a research institution devoted to helping make communities across the world safer, healthier, and more prosperous, RAND plays a key role in analyzing public policy issues and developing recommendations to tackle them for high-level government sponsors and the stakeholders that engage with them. This requires cutting-edge analytic computing capabilities, computing that enables high productivity and effective management, and the ability to seamlessly collaborate among dispersed teams and with research sponsors and partners. And it is critical for RAND to remain a trusted government partner by upholding the highest standards of information security.

To accomplish this, RAND’s IS team, led by the Vice President, IS and CIO, works in partnership with the rest of RAND’s senior leadership, the research divisions, and the other operations departments to ensure RAND has leading IS capabilities. Reporting to the senior vice president of finance and operations, the CIO will have the knowledge and leadership skills to provide world-class information services, including accelerating our efforts to be at the cutting edge of using rapidly advancing AI capabilities.

About RAND

RAND provides critical insights on a wide range of policy issues spanning security, health, education, and much more. Our work is sponsored by governments and nonprofit organizations and is also supported by philanthropy. To uphold our commitment to the public interest and trust in RAND, our research is rigorous and free of commercial, political, and ideological bias; we ensure independence through evidence-based analysis, funding transparency, open publication within the bounds of information security requirements, and conflicts of interest reviews; and we maintain the highest standards of conduct in everything we do.

We foster a culture of inclusiveness, collegiality, teamwork, intellectual openness, and integrity. Combined with our mission, this enables us to attract diverse top-tier research and operations talent who are mission-driven and have the belief that no problem is too big, complex, or controversial to take on.

Position Description

With a focus on setting strategy and leading IS staff to execute to high standards, the CIO is responsible for RAND’s information technology infrastructure encompassing on-premises and cloud-based capabilities, information security, business and research applications—including custom analytic applications, data management, a digital “library”, and the research software engineering and data science group.

As a senior leader at RAND, the CIO, working with their Leadership Team, will lead the continual evolution of RAND’s IS strategy to ensure RAND is leveraging advances in computing and analytic technologies and that it stays well aligned with the strategies and research needs of RAND’s research divisions. To do so, the CIO will collaborate closely with stakeholders across RAND to maintain a deep understanding of their business goals, challenges, and technology needs, along with offering new ideas on how technology and other IS capabilities can help them. And the CIO will oversee the deployment of technology solutions, including software, hardware, and cloud services, ensuring they support business objectives. This includes developing, deploying, and sustaining custom applications when merited.

In addition to traditional information technology roles, RAND’s IS Department plays a pivotal role in advancing RAND’s research capabilities by leveraging cutting-edge computing technologies for analysis. This requires ensuring that the research computing infrastructure, consisting of high-performance computing and specialized analytic applications, can meet all research needs and stays at the cutting edge to enable RAND to offer innovative research. IS also includes RAND’s research software engineers, research programmers, and data scientists, all of whom work on research teams and help RAND research teams maximally leverage technology capabilities. In addition, this continual engagement should also lead to the development of ideas for new advanced research information technology solutions offering improved analytic capabilities that can be brought to the research community for more effective or efficient analysis.

Key responsibilities include:

• In collaboration with leaders across RAND, seeking to understand how their organizations operate, their priorities, and their requirements, develop, execute, and evolve an IT strategy that supports overall, division, and department priorities for research capabilities and operational efficiency. 

• Driving the IS Team to continuous