Who we are

**This search is being managed externally. To express interest or nominate a candidate, please email supporting materials confidentially to John Milman at SpencerStuart - rpicio@spencerstuart.com.**

As one of the world's leading research universities, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) is critically focused on delivering best-in-class technology services and capabilities to empower all members of its community in a distinctive, industry-leading way. RPI's technology function has been challenged in meeting these high standards given the university's scale and operational complexity being comprised of schools and colleges with differing priorities and historical ways of working.

Learn more about our...

• Guiding Principles
• Core Values
• 10-year Strategy
• 5-year Roadmap

Are you ready to change the world? Apply now!

Institute Leadership

Martin A. Schmidt, the 19^th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, took office on July 1, 2022. Prior to coming to RPI, President Schmidt served as the provost of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2014 and was also MIT's senior academic and budget officer. He was responsible for the Institute’s educational programs, as well as for the recruitment, promotion, and tenure of faculty. As provost, he worked closely with MIT’s deans to establish academic priorities, and with other members of the Institute’s senior team to manage financial planning and research support.

RPI Quick Facts

• 7,064 enrolled students (academic year ’22-’23; 5,823 undergraduates; 1,164 graduates)
• Approx. 470 FTE faculty
• Operating budget: approx. $442M
• Offer more than 140 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs across five schools as well as programs and certificates for working professionals

For more information about RPI visit www.rpi.edu.

View RPI’s College Tour video at https://youtu.be/z0R8weH8yDk

Job Summary

Amidst this context, RPI is looking to recruit a new Vice President, Chief Information Officer to help modernize the university’s technology function to meet the community's current and future needs, while also leading a campus wide digital transformation. This leader will be responsible for evaluating RPI's current technology operating model and portfolio, developing a technology strategy in partnership with stakeholders across the community that accounts for the needs of both individual schools/colleges and the university at large, and then laying out plans to modernize the university's technology function to begin delivering results in support of this new strategy.  There is a desire to create a pragmatic centralized strategy, while also meeting and supporting the specific needs of the Institute.

RPI's new Chief Information Officer must balance the often-conflicting university-level and school/college-level priorities, taking a practical approach to weighing the trade-offs that arise between delivering tailored capabilities and services in a consistent and cost-effective way. And to do so effectively, it is critical that this new leader bring a service orientation and partnership mindset to helping shepherd RPI's stakeholder community on this change journey, while helping to drive cultural and change adoption across the organization.

RPI's new Chief Information Officer will lead a team of 100 people, within a matrix reporting structure, due to the various technologies that have been built inside the university over the years.

This position will be based at RPI's main campus in Troy, NY.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define the university’s technology vision in line with RPI’s purpose, vision, and mission; shape the processes, technologies, architecture, and organization to realize that technology vision.
• Create university technology strategies, with a focus on RPI’s success in helping students achieve their educational and career goals via state-of-the-art technology.
• Evaluate overall information technology and recommend and implement transformative, disruptive, as well as evolutionary technology, and practices that support efficient, effective, and innovative student experience, learning resources, and products. Assess modern technologies to determine if they would be of beneficial use to the university.
• Create a strong and effective IT governance process to facilitate the prioritization of IT investments and help guide decisions on tools and solutions. Help identify key stakeholders for participation and assist in the outline of the process by which decisions are made. Provide transparency around prioritization and decisions.
• Establish a Project Management Office to clearly define project goals and objectives, gather requirements, manage execution, monitor performance and value to the university.
• Evaluate emerging technology around AI and cloud solutions and implement the most beneficial solutions to help the university to continue to be more agile in nature and be able to provide innovative solutions in a more efficient manner.
• Improve consistency in the level of IT support throughout the university for faculty, staff, students.
• Develop, recruit, and advance IT leadership talent, in creating a high-powered organization able to transform RPI for the next phase of leadership, innovation, student success, and results.
• Direct the overall design, development, and testing organization and processes for modern technology development, enhancements, and maintenance with a particular focus on inventive, transformative, industry-leading innovation.
• Identify opportunities and risks for delivering the university’s services as a web-based campus, including identification of competitive services, opportunities for innovation, and assessment of marketplace obstacles and technical hurdles to achieve success.
• Identify technology trends and evolving social behavior that may support or impede the success of the university.
• Collaborate with the appropriate departments to assess and recommend technologies that support university organizational needs. Collaborate with various leaders to help drive negotiations with third parties and other service providers.
• Provide strategic leadership for the university’s cybersecurity program, including the development of policies, compliance with NIST, CMMC, and GLBA, and oversight of institutional risk. Lead the development and regular testing of business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree, preferably with concentration in STEM field such as computer science, engineering, or other technical field.

  • Fifteen years of technology leadership experience including experience in group-level or division-level technology leadership roles (e.g., CIO, CTO, etc.)
  • Five years of experience in a complex environment.
  • Experience in higher education, association or a multi-faceted corporate environment is preferred.
  • Experience with both legacy and modern technology environments, as well as modern methodologies
  • Experience with agile delivery, public cloud, AI, SaaS solutions, mainframe technologies, microservices architectures, networks, etc.
  • Team leadership experience of organizations of more than 1,000 employees
  • Experience including full-time, contract, and vendor resources.
  • Experience working at the executive leadership team level of an organization.
  • Experience as a part of and/or engaging at the highest levels of an organization.

  Applicants must meet stated minimum education and experience requirements.

Shift

 Business Hours with weekends or evenings occasionally required

Travel

Driving

 Driving a personal vehicle for non-passenger use

Starting Salary/Rate

Expected hiring range: $375,000 - $425,000 annually + full benefits

Pay transparency disclosure: The selected candidate’s salary will be determined based on factors that include the available budget, internal equity, and the final candidate’s qualifications, experience, education and other job-related credentials. This hiring range is provided as Rensselaer’s good faith estimate of the expected hiring range at the time of posting.

Application instructions

This search is being managed externally. To express interest or nominate a candidate, please email supporting materials confidentially to John Milman at SpencerStuart -  rpicio@spencerstuart.com.

Total Compensation and Benefits Information

Rensselaer’s Total Compensation Program is designed to provide stable pay growth, a comprehensive and affordable benefits package, and a comprehensive and affordable retiree medical and prescription plan. Our goal is to provide you and your family with a comprehensive health and welfare program as an umbrella of financial security and protection during your employment. For more information, please visit Benefits | Human Resources (rpi.edu).