Senior Solutions Architect (Enterprise Higher Education Implementation Experience)

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 Ellucian’s Professional Services team is looking for a Senior Solutions Architect  to serve as the architectural delivery lead for our most complex higher education implementations—typically system-wide programs spanning multiple institutions, campuses, or schools. In this role, you will own the end-to-end solution architecture across a broad Ellucian portfolio, guiding strategy through execution to ensure solutions are scalable, supportable, and aligned to measurable institutional outcomes. This position is delivery-first and requires deep experience leading large, cross-functional programs. You may lead a team of Solutions Architects on major engagements (matrix leadership) and act as the primary architectural escalation point for program leadership, project teams, and executive stakeholders. While the role may support select presales activities, the primary focus is driving delivery excellence and client success. In addition, the Senior Solutions Architect is expected to provide thought leadership by contributing to global standards, practices, and reusable IP that improve delivery consistency, accelerate time-to-value, increase client satisfaction, and elevate the overall client experience. Where you will make an impact System-Wide Delivery Leadership Serve as the lead architect for large-scale, system-wide implementations spanning multiple schools/campuses and complex stakeholder environments. Translate institutional goals into an executable architecture approach that balances outcomes, risk, cost, timeline, and long-term operability. Establish architectural guardrails and decision frameworks; drive alignment across functional, technical, data, integration, reporting, and security workstreams. Act as the architectural escalation point for complex delivery challenges and competing priorities. Architecture Strategy & Solution Delivery Design and guide delivery of scalable end-to-end solutions across Ellucian products and platforms, maximizing configuration, extensibility, and SaaS best practices. Ensure solution architecture aligns with customer goals, Ellucian product direction, and delivery standards—while remaining realistic and implementable. Lead/guide architecture artifacts and reviews (e.g., solution architecture, integration architecture, environment approach, data and reporting strategy). Drive consistent adoption of delivery methodologies (Agile), tooling, and governance practices that improve predictability and quality. Engagement Oversight & Execution Partner with Project Managers, delivery leaders, Product Owners, and Enterprise Architects to align plan, dependencies, resourcing, and execution approach. Lead discovery and architecture design activities (including workshops), ensuring requirements, process alignment, and solution fit are fully understood. Identify and mitigate delivery risks early (scope, complexity, integration, data readiness, change impacts), and support strong governance and