What success looks like in this role:
• Provides presales solution architecture services across materially significant, strategically important clients and client groups.
• Leads in the development of complex, tailored solutions, ensuring alignment with client needs and Unisys offerings, often incorporating emerging technologies.
• Develops and delivers high-level presentations and demos, articulating the value of proposed solutions to senior-level managers and decision-makers.
• Works with sales, product development and engineering teams to align proposed solutions with business objectives, ensuring technical feasibility and optimal client outcomes.
• Oversees and contributes to preparation of technical responses for RFPs and RFIs, ensuring competitive and technically sound submissions.
• Evaluates potential risks, ensuring that solutions comply with operational standards, security protocols and applicable regulations.
• Fosters long-term client relations, providing trusted advice and counsel from a technical and operational perspective.
• Serve as a trusted technology advisor to higher-education leadership, including campus CIOs, deputy CIOs, and central system stakeholders, with an understanding of shared governance models, academic culture, and decentralized IT environments common in public university systems.
• Guide solution architectures that support core higher-education systems, such as Student Information Systems (SIS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), identity and access management (IAM), research computing, and campus administrative platforms, ensuring interoperability and long-term sustainability.
• Ensure proposed solutions align with higher-education regulatory and policy requirements, including FERPA, CSU systemwide policies, State of California requirements, and digital accessibility mandates (e.g., Section 508, ADA).
• Navigate complex procurement, funding, and approval processes, including public-sector RFPs, multiyear funding cycles, grant-funded initiatives, and system-level vs. campus-level decision authority within large university systems.
• Partner with academic, administrative, and IT stakeholders to balance innovation with operational stability, recognizing the dual mission of higher-education institutions to support instruction, research, and student services.
• Provide technical leadership during modernization initiatives, including legacy system transformation, migration to cloud-based platforms, cybersecurity modernization, and digital accessibility improvements across instructional and non-instructional systems.
You will be successful in this role if you have:
• BA/BS degree and 12+ years' relevant experience OR equivalent combination of education and experience
• Master's degree preferred
• Demonstrated experience supporting higher-education institutions, preferably public universities or large multi-campus systems (e.g., CSU, UC, Big Ten, state university systems), in a CTO, enterprise architect, CIO advisory, or senior solution architecture role.
• Working knowledge of higher-education compliance and governance, including FERPA requirements, student data privacy, institutional data governance, and vendor risk management within academic environments.
• Experience operating in decentralized IT models, collaborating with campus IT teams, academic departments, and central governance bodies to align enterprise standards with local autonomy.
• Familiarity with accessibility and inclusive technology requirements in higher education, including Section 508, ADA, and CSU Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) expectations for instructional and administrative systems.
• Proven success supporting public-sector procurement and RFP responses within higher education, including requirements traceability, evaluation criteria mapping, and stakeholder presentations in formal selection processes.
• Ability to translate academic and institutional priorities into technology roadmaps, balancing student experience, faculty needs, research enablement, and administrative efficiency.
This role may require access to export-controlled commodities and technology. Therefore, to conform to U.S. export control regulations, applicant should be eligible for any required authorizations from the U.S. Government.
