Workday Program Director for Student Implementation

Workday Program Director for Student Implementation at Vermont State University

Remote Eligible, must work EST hours

The Program Director is responsible for providing senior-level leadership and strategic oversight for all aspects of the Workday Student implementation and other Phase 2 implementations including Adaptive Planning and Prism. The role includes orchestration of project activities, system and data governance, and change management. The Program Director leads and facilitates the steering committee, oversees the Workday Student core team, and guides functional workstream leaders and teams to ensure successful achievement of project goals.

In collaboration with the project sponsors, the Program Director also delivers regular project updates to senior leadership and the Board of Trustees.

• Lead end-to-end delivery of the Workday Student implementation and other Phase 2 implementations, ensuring alignment with scope, timeline, and budget.
• Act as the primary point of contact between the business, implementation partners, and internal technical teams.
• Plan resources, manage team participation, and collaborate with stakeholders to ensure effective program delivery.
• Provide leadership and facilitation of the Steering Committee and overall system, data, and project governance processes.
• Direct project managers, business and process analysts, systems leads, change leaders, and other functional stakeholders engaged in the implementation effort.
• Create and deliver regular program updates to sponsors, presidents, senior leadership, and the Board of Trustees that describe plans, progress, barriers, and risks.
• Ensure that system configurations and deliverables meet the technical and functional objectives of both institutions and shared service units.
• Coordinate with Phase 1 (HCM/FIN/Payroll) project leaders to provide oversight of transition period integrations and data management projects.
• Manage daily project resources, budgets, and scope adjustments that could significantly impact budget or timeline.
• Lead policy-level decision making and governance with senior leadership.
• Negotiate differences in requirements and policies between departments and institutions.
• Monitor project health, provide status reports, and appropriately escalated issues to ensure transparency and timely resolution.
• Ensure successful transition to post-go-live support, including stabilization and knowledge transfer.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

The Program Director reports to the Chief Information Officer who also serves as the Workday Executive Sponsor.

Provide leadership and project-related supervision to the Workday project leads, project managers, and dotted-line supervision to the functional leads for the student module implementation and other Phase 2 implementations.

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, business, or related fields.
• Minimum 7–10+ years of project management experience or a comparable combination of education and relevant experience.
• Extensive experience in project or program management for large-scale technology implementations.
• Experience leading complex projects that require senior leader buy‑in and navigating organizational and political challenges.
• Demonstrated success in implementing or administering information systems involving complex systems, business processes, and data migration.
• PMP, Workday certification(s), or Agile certification(s).
• Experience managing vendor relationships and third‑party implementation partners.
• Supervisor or team leadership experience.

• Master’s degree in computer science, information technology, business, or related fields.
• Experience as a senior project manager for a Workday implementation, especially within higher education.
• Functional knowledge within departments (registrar, advising, financial aid, or student financials) that will be implementing Workday Student systems and processes.
• Experience managing system configuration, data conversion, and migration in a complex enterprise systems environment.

• Knowledge…