Senior Colleague Modernization Engineer

Ellucian Company L.P.; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health coverage

Flexible time off

401k with match

Parental Leave

Wellness programs

Education assistance

Job summary

Ellucian seeks a Senior Colleague Modernization Engineer to lead modernization on SaaS projects. The role blends SA, TA, and integration work to accelerate go-lives, reduce delivery time, and improve repeatability through AI and reusable assets.

You will guide migration from legacy to SaaS-aligned solutions, assess environments, and drive scalable delivery with cross-functional teams. You will influence architecture, security, and data migration strategies while delivering measurable outcomes

Qualifications

• 10+ years of solution architecture and delivery experience in consulting or professional services.
• Deep expertise across higher education enterprise domains (SIS, Finance, HR) and SaaS architectures.
• Strong ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive alignment with stakeholders.
• Exceptional communication skills for technical and executive audiences.
• Practical, outcomes-oriented approach balancing ideal vs. feasible solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design and configure solution architecture, validate and troubleshoot, and automate steps where possible.
• Assess customer environments and define SaaS-aligned target-state solutions.
• Analyze extensions and integrations, proposing SaaS-safe replacements.
• Translate modernization requirements into scalable technical designs with security in mind.
• Lead or support discovery workshops and produce scoping outputs for builds.
• Facilitate knowledge transfer so customer teams can maintain solutions independently.
• Contribute to productized assets and reusable content to speed delivery.

Skills

Solution architecture leadership

Executive communication

Cross-functional collaboration

AI-driven modernization

Technical delivery

Customer engagement

Automation and reuse

Job description

About Ellucian

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 million students. Ellucian’s AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian’s innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

About the Opportunity

The Senior Colleague Modernization Engineer (Senior Solutions Architect) is a hybrid role on SaaS Modernization projects designed to fulfill multiple functions by combining outcomes previously delivered by a Solution Architect (SA), Technical Architect (TA), and integration engineer into a single, versatile position.

The role will directly support SaaS go-lives for customers, reduce delivery duration and effort, and improve repeatability and scalability by strategically leveraging AI, automation, reusable assets, and modernization accelerators to improve delivery processes.

The Senior Colleague Modernization Engineer will play a critical role in helping customers move from highly customized legacy environments to sustainable, SaaS-aligned solutions. This includes applying AI-enabled: analysis, documentation, design validation, migration support, integration assessment, and delivery acceleration techniques to improve both customer outcomes and internal delivery efficiency.

Where you will make an impact

• Perform solution design and technical architecture configuration, validation, and troubleshooting and work to automate those steps. Migration Assistant will reduce the effort required to perform these tasks in the near term.
  • The modernization engineer will define manual and time consuming steps to ensure that automation can fulfill the same outcomes. Reimagining how to achieve the outcomes more efficiently and effectively is the ultimate objective.
  • Assess Tech Mod customer environments and define SaaS-aligned target-state technical solutions.
  • Analyze existing extensions, customizations, and integrations and develop strategies to replace them with baseline product functionality or SaaS-safe alternatives.
  • Translate functional modernization requirements into technical designs, considering scalability, performance, and security
  • Lead or support modernization discovery workshops and produce solutioning outputs (e.g., scoping sheets for the build phase)
  • Facilitate knowledge transfer to customer teams so they can independently maintain implemented solutions
• Drive acceleration, repeatability and scalability by contributing to standardized, productized assets and reusable content and leveraging AI to accomplish manual and time-consuming tasks.
  • Reduce the manual workload on projects by performing technical delivery tasks that currently require SA and TA resources, capturing the essential steps, and then automating the manual steps.
    • Leverage AI and automation to speed delivery and repeatability.
    • Collaborate across workstreams — discovery, content creation, data migration, integrations, and enablement.
    • Ensure key product feedback to speed and improve provisioning and configuration processes is funneled back to product management to drive product enhancements.

What will you bring

• Knowledge and practical experience applying AI to speed business processes and achieve better and faster results for our customers and internal teams.
• 10+ years of solution architecture and delivery experience in consulting or professional services, including leadership on large, complex programs.
• Deep expertise across higher education enterprise domains (preferably Ellucian), such as Student Information Systems (SIS), Finance, HR, and adjacent ecosystems.
• Strong technical and functional fluency in SaaS architectures, ERP ecosystems, integrations, data migration, reporting/analytics, and security considerations.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and drive alignment across stakeholders with competing priorities—while maintaining delivery momentum.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to convey complex concepts to technical teams and executive audiences with clarity and confidence.
• Strong customer presence; skilled at building trust, facilitating workshops, driving decisions, and navigating ambiguity in high-visibility programs.
• A practical, outcomes-oriented approach to architecture—balancing “what’s ideal” with “what will work” to deliver measurable results.

What makes #Ellucianlife

• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision
• Flexible time off
• Thrive Flex Lifestyle Account (LSA) that allows you to contribute towards your health, financial or learning interests
• 401k w/ match & BrightPlan - to help you save for the future
• Parental Leave
• 5 charitable days to support the community that supports us
• Telemedicine
• Wellness
• Headspace Care (mental health)
• Wellbeats (virtual fitness classes)
  • RethinkCare & Wellthy– caregiver support
  • Diversity and inclusion programs which provide access to internal employee resource groups
• Employee referral bonuses to encourage the addition of great new people to the team
• We Foster a learning culture with:
  • Education Assistance Program
  • Professional development opportunities
  • LinkedIn Learning

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