Client CTO - Higher Education

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.

Unisys is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that considers all qualified applicants without regard to age, caste, citizenship, color, disability, family medical history, family status, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, parental status, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, veteran status or any other category protected by law.