Student Information System Manager

The Student Information System Manager at MBZUAI provides senior functional leadership and institutional ownership of the University’s Student Information System (Banner SaaS), the central academic and operational system of record. This role leads to the end-to-end functional vision, design, implementation, governance, and continuous evolution of Banner, ensuring that Registrar’s Office (RO) policies, academic regulations, research-based program structures, and operational processes are accurately translated into system functionality and adopted effectively across the University.

Acting as the primary interface between academic and administrative stakeholders, the Registrar’s Office, IT, and system vendors, the Associate Manager ensures that SIS integrations, data structures, and workflows support institutional scale, academic integrity, regulatory compliance, and long‑term sustainability, while driving change management, training, and continuous improvement beyond go‑live in a research‑intensive university environment.

• Lead and deliver SIS Banner SaaS work streams from configuration through go‑live and beyond, acting as the institutional functional lead and product owner from the academic and business perspective.
• Own delivery milestones, dependencies, risks, and cutover readiness, ensuring system decisions support current operations and future academic and research growth.
• Ensure Banner configuration supports complex research‑based academic models, including thesis‑driven programs, supervisor structures, non‑standard progression pathways, and funding‑linked enrollment requirements.

• Translate academic regulations, governance decisions, and Registrar’s Office policies into scalable system logic, ensuring Banner enforces policy while preserving academic flexibility and innovation.
• Map, standardize, and continuously optimize end‑to‑end academic lifecycle processes, including registration, add/drop, withdrawals, grading, academic standing, progression, graduation, records management, and scholarship eligibility.
• Define and institutionalize standard operating procedures, internal controls, and maker‑checker mechanisms that ensure auditability, consistency, and institutional trust in academic data.

• Lead business‑driven user acceptance testing (UAT) to validate that Banner accurately reflects academic rules, research pathways, and student outcomes before becoming the official system of record.
• Design comprehensive test scenarios, datasets, and validation checkpoints that protect the integrity of grades, academic standing, graduation eligibility, and official transcripts.
• Oversee post‑release stabilization, defect triage, and validation cycles to mitigate institutional, academic, and regulatory risk.

• Design and deliver a university‑wide functional training and change enablement strategy, ensuring faculty, advisors, administrators, and student‑facing teams understand how academic decisions translate into system outcomes.
• Develop role‑based training materials, reference guides, and train‑the‑trainer programs that promote distributed ownership rather than dependence on the Registrar’s Office.
• Lead structured communications on system and process changes, clarifying impacts, timelines, and mitigation strategies for high‑impact academic and research‑related changes.
• Be accountable for designing, publishing, and continuously improving online learning resources that support faculty and student adoption of Banner, ensuring materials remain current with system releases, policy updates, and process changes

• Define and govern academic data standards and business rules…