Senior Director, Integrations

About the role

Element451 is the AI-first CRM and student engagement platform for higher education. Our platform helps colleges and universities manage the full student lifecycle, from first inquiry through enrollment and student success. Institutions run their admissions, marketing, engagement, and retention operations on Element451, which means our platform has to connect reliably with the systems campuses already depend on - starting with their Student Information System. The Senior Director, Integrations will own the end-to-end integration lifecycle for our managed delivery model, ensuring that signed agreements translate into technically sound and reliable implementations. You will be the primary architect of how we turn strategic commitments into operational reality, balancing technical depth with people leadership. This role is critical to maintaining our competitive advantage of delivering seamless, out-of-the-box connectivity rather than leaving customers to manage complex integrations alone. You will be expected to combine hands-on technical judgment with executive-level ownership of process, quality, and team development.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Validate the technical scope and feasibility of integrations as deals move from Sales to Delivery, ensuring alignment between the signed Statement of Work and what can be realistically built.
• Design reference integration architectures and standards for SIS and other campus system integrations, establishing patterns for data models, sync strategies, authentication, and error handling.
• Lead the integration engineering team in building, testing, and deploying integrations through UAT and go-live, overseeing the operation of bidirectional syncs powered by Dagster jobs and Ethos API event streams.
• Own the delivery and maintenance of flat-file and one-off integrations, including SFTP-based CSV exchanges and custom feeds such as Common App, ensuring they meet the same quality standards as managed connectors.
• Serve as the senior subject-matter expert for SIS integrations, deeply understanding how these integrations are built so you can accurately scope work and guide architects and engineers.
• Operate as the primary escalation owner for live integration issues, taking responsibility for health monitoring, versioning, and rapid response when problems arise close to critical decision cycles.
• Build and manage the integration support experience, including chat-based Live Support, staffing, quality standards, and feedback loops that inform product and architecture improvements.
• Define and drive the execution of the integration delivery operating model, including hiring, process design, and tool selection, to ensure scalable, reliable, and high-quality outcomes.
• Partner closely with Product and Engineering to convert field insights and delivery realities into native platform capabilities, reducing future custom work through configurable solutions.
• Shape the future of Element451 integrations strategy, guiding efforts that expand beyond the SIS into LMS integrations and potential "Bring Your Own Integrations" models.

Requirements

• You are a seasoned leader with deep experience owning complex integration programs in a SaaS environment, with a track record of delivering reliable, large-scale integrations.
• You possess expert-level knowledge of Student Information Systems and the integration patterns, standards, and workflows commonly used in higher education technology environments.
• You have a strong background in API integration design and implementation, including experience with OAuth, SAML, API keys, and secure authentication mechanisms.
• You are proficient in architecting and overseeing data synchronization strategies, including real-time event-driven patterns and scheduled batch processing.
• You have demonstrated ability to lead and develop technical teams, providing hands-on guidance, code reviews, and career growth support to architects and engineers.
• You are comfortable working directly with data formats and protocols such as CSV flat files, JSON, and XML, as well as tools like SFTP and enterprise messaging patterns.
• You understand how integrations fit into the broader student technology ecosystem, including experience with platforms like Ellucian Ethos and similar frameworks.
• You have a history of partnering with Product and Engineering leaders to define roadmaps, prioritize features, and balance trade-offs between custom solutions and platform consolidation.

Nice to have

• Experience in higher education technology or working directly with colleges and universities.
• Familiarity with live chat-based support models and building support playbooks for technical products.
• Background in Dagster or similar orchestration frameworks for managing data pipelines and sync jobs.

Practical notes

This is a full-time remote role located in the United States.