Director, Digital Foundry

Requisition number: 39670

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Information Technology Services (ITS) is seeking a Director of the Digital Foundry who will play a pivotal role in transforming UCLA’s IT operations to a product-centric, cloud-first way of delivering digital services to the university community. The Director, Digital Foundry will lead a diverse team to cultivate an innovative and forward-thinking culture, focused on advancing DevOps practices, bolstering human-centered design, streamlining product testing/releases, and accelerating the university's migration to cloud technologies and SaaS applications. This leader will oversee a portfolio of DevOps, Cloud Transformation, Quality Assurance, Release Management, and Human Centered Design. They will ensure UCLA’s product/application development processes are standardized, optimized, efficient, and agile, aligning digital products with the needs of students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, and all other IT customers. This leader will leverage their understanding of the application lifecycle and the intricacies of cloud technology to drive UCLA into the digital age, with user-centric design, agile development, automation, and continuous innovation at the forefront. The Director, Digital Foundry will collaborate closely with peer verticals delivering products and solutions to implement standards outlined in the Digital Foundry.

Situated on 419 acres, five miles from the Pacific Ocean, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is enriched by the cultural diversity of the dynamic greater Los Angeles area, as well as the geographic advantages of Southern California. One of the world’s preeminent public research universities, UCLA is an international leader in breadth and quality of academic, research, health care, wellness, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs, with more than 5,200 faculty members who teach approximately 47,500 students in the UCLA College and 12 professional schools. UCLA is consistently ranked among the top institutions nationally for research funding, having generated $1.7 billion in research grants and contracts in the last fiscal year alone.

The Information Technology Services (ITS) department at UCLA is a vital part of the university community, providing essential technology services and support to ensure the campus can effectively pursue its mission. It is UCLA’s spirited tradition of thought leadership and commitment to excellence that enables an ambitious and resourceful approach to transforming our networked, ever-changing campus environment. To meet the needs of today’s campus and tomorrow’s leaders, ITS has identified a set of strategic priorities entitled the Digital Campus Roadmap.

Working Title	Director, Digital Foundry
Anticipated Salary Range	$148,171 - $194,593
Career Tracks Job Summary	Involves providing a variety of IT services. Assignments may include database administration, application programming, IT project management, systems administration, systems and process analysis, security, solution development and maintenance, business technical support or a combination of these and / or other IT functions. Note: If 50% or more of the position is in a defined function, the position should be placed in that function.
Career Tracks Summary	Spends the majority of time (50% or more) achieving organizational objectives through the coordinated achievements of subordinate staff. Establishes departmental goals and objectives, functions with autonomy. Manages the accountability and stewardship of human, financial, and often physical resources in compliance with departmental and organizational goals and objectives. Ensures subordinate supervisors and professionals adhere to defined internal controls. Manages systems and procedures to protect departmental assets. Receives assignments in the form of objectives and determines how to use resources to meet schedules and goals. Reviews and approves recommendations for functional programs. Provides guidance to subordinates to achieve goals in accordance with established policies. Erroneous decisions or failure to achieve goals results in additional costs and personnel, and serious delays in overall schedules.
Department Summary	The Digital Foundry sets the strategy for a portfolio of enterprise-wide products and platforms enabling the activities of administrative and academic stakeholders across the university. The Digital Foundry team facilitates and conducts quality assurance, testing, release management, application lifecycle management, and UI/UX for core enterprise technologies ensuring functionality, quality, business value, user-experience, and digital accessibility of the products and platforms meet the expectations of the campus community. The Digital Foundry fuels ITS’ cloud-first strategy by strategically reducing technical debt in partnership with other departments and teams leveraging cutting-edge techniques to accelerate releases using automation and application lifecycle management standards and tools.
Type of Supervision Received	Directly reports to Deputy Chief Information Officer; Directly supervises ~3 FTE; Indirectly supervises ~15 FTE.

Core Functions and Duties

% of Duty Total (must total 100%)	Core Function	Duty Statements
10%	Cloud Enablement andand DevOps	Serves as the key visionary and strategist for the university's cloud-first product-centered approach, overseeing the migration, optimization, and governance of cloud-based solutions to enhance performance, improve security, and reduce costs, ensuring that these solutions effectively support the university's digital transformation efforts. Advances the adoption of DevOps practices across ITS, fostering a culture of collaboration between development and operations teams, including advocating for automation, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and infrastructure as code to improve the efficiency and quality of software development and deployment.
15%	Quality Assurance, Testing, Release Management, and Application Lifecycle Management	Oversees the implementation of robust quality assurance and testing frameworks, ensuring that all digital products and applications meet rigorous standards for functionality, performance, and user experience. Supervises the release management process to ensure smooth and timely delivery of software updates and new features. This includes coordinating across different teams, managing dependencies, and mitigating risks to ensure that releases are deployed with minimal disruption to users and services. Manages the streamlining of application lifecycle management, ensuring that every stage—from initial concept and design, through development, testing, deployment, and maintenance—is handled efficiently. This includes continuous monitoring and evaluation of applications to determine when enhancements, updates, or retirements are needed. Leads collaboration with cross-functional teams to define and document application lifecycle management (ALM) standards, guidelines, and methodologies.
10%	Human Centered Design and Digital Accessibility	Champions a human-centered design approach to UI and UX design/development for digital technologies and products, leading efforts to understand the needs, motivations, and behaviors of users. Serves as one of the university's chief advocates for digital accessibility, overseeing the team that ensures UCLA’s digital products and applications are designed and developed to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Serves as one of the university's chief advocates for digital accessibility, overseeing the team that ensures UCLA’s digital products and applications are designed and developed to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
10%	Problem Solving	Proactively anticipates and mitigates problems and risks within the Digital Foundry.
10%	Continuous Improvement	Stays abreast of industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in digital development, DevOps, human centered design, accessibility, and quality assurance to ensure the university's digital services are up-to-date and meet industry standards.
10%	Customer Service	Collaborates with system administrators, network engineers, and other IT teams to troubleshoot and resolve infrastructure-related issues that impact software application performance and availability.
10%	Project Planning & Management	Monitors and reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to assess the performance and effectiveness of the team and make data-driven decisions to improve operations.
10%	Communications & Training	Establishes and maintains effective communication channels with key stakeholders, including senior leaders, faculty, staff, and students, to ensure that their needs and requirements are met. Communicates and collaborates with other IT teams and stakeholders to ensure smooth deployment and operation of digital applications and services.
10%	Leadership, Management, & Supervision	Manages the development of team members by helping them set and achieve goals for their career growth. Fosters an inclusive environment that values differences and creates a sense of belonging and appreciation for team members. Leads by example, demonstrating ethics, high accountability, and actively drives the process of embedding IT values and behaviors. Contributes to a culture of trust and transparency. Drives best-in-class customer service to UCLA through effective team member engagement. Selects, trains, guides, directs, evaluates, and, as required, takes corrective action with professional and support staff. Recommends salary actions, promotions, and terminations. Participates in recruitment and orientation of new employees. Evaluates assigned staff performance and competency.
5%	Other	Actively contributes to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion across the organization and UCLA’s campus. Actively promotes the organization’s core values and consistently integrates innovation, employee fulfillment, teamwork, respect, excellence, integrity, service, and accountability into each aspect of their work. Maintains current knowledge of University policy and procedure; effectively, consistently and fairly applies University policy and/or campus/division procedures for assigned area and team members supervised; complies with University, Campus and division policies and procedures regarding privacy of information, authorized use of University resources and the security of University systems and data. Performs other related responsibilities as requested and when necessary. The University reserves the right to add or change duties at any time.

Education

Education	Education Details	Required/Preferred
Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent combination of experience/training	In one or more of the following fields: information technology, computer science, application services, engineering, or another related field.	Required
Bachelor’s Degree	In one or more of the following fields: information technology, computer science, application services, engineering, or another related field.	Preferred

6.0 EXPERIENCE
Experience	Experience Details	Required/Preferred
5 or more years	Experience working in one or more of the following fields: applications development/management, DevOps, human centered design (UI/UX), quality assurance, information technology, IT service management, or related field.	Required
7 or more years	Experience working in one or more of the following fields: applications development/management, DevOps, human centered design (UI/UX), quality assurance, information technology, IT service management, or related field.	Preferred
7 or more years	Experience leading teams in a management or leadership role, particularly in a fast-paced, service-oriented environment.	Required
10 or more years	Experience leading teams in a management or leadership role, particularly in a fast-paced, service-oriented environment.	Preferred

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

#	KSA	Required/ Preferred
1	Extensive knowledge of DevOps and Agile practices, with a proven track record in driving their implementation and adoption.	Required
2	Advanced knowledge of the application lifecycle, human-centered design (UI/UX), quality assurance, testing, release management, and accessibility best practices.	Required
3	Demonstrated expertise in implementing and managing pipelines of digital products, platforms, and services.	Required
4	Extensive experience in leading and managing teams of digital professionals.	Required
5	Deep understanding of cloud technologies and SaaS products, including strategies for migration, deployment, security, and cost optimization.	Required
6	Highly skilled in written and verbal communications and is able to communicate on behalf of large teams and relay highly complex technical information. Significant experience communicating with technical and non-technical leaders.	Required
7	Demonstrated experience leading and managing teams, including abilities in persuasion, negotiation, change management, and mentorship.	Required
8	Highly advanced project management skills with demonstrated experience delivering multiple complex projects, delegating responsibility, tracking project progress, managing others, and coaching teams on the prioritization of competing project/customer needs. Significant experience leading others in a project-based environment using leading project management practices including schedule management, status reporting, and communication of project risks and issues.	Required
9	Significant experience solving complex, technical and non-technical problems with budget, timeline, and other resource implications. Able to delegate solutioning when appropriate to the proper resources. Experience operating as a point of escalation. Demonstrated understanding of how decisions affect teams. Demonstrated ability to make decisions with integrity.	Required
10	Significant experience providing inclusive leadership of others, advancing an inclusive environment that values equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging.	Required
11	Integrates creative thinking and industry-leading practices into diverse team operations; has experience inspiring teams to innovate and grow. Has significant experience leading in an ever-changing, fast-paced environment.	Required
12	Experience in complex higher education environments, serving academic and administrative functions of a large public university.	Preferred

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