---
title: 'Senior Director, Integrations at Element451'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-integrations-element451-united-states-pnqe2qw6jh6d'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Senior Director, Integrations at Element451

- **Company:** Element451
- **Location:** United States
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-04
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/element451/1b8fc72c-1354-4d5d-968f-7c4700789258

## Job description

Element451 is the AI-first CRM and student engagement platform for higher education. Our platform helps colleges and universities manage the full student lifecycle, from first inquiry through enrollment and student success. Institutions run their admissions, marketing, engagement, and retention operations on Element451, which means our platform has to connect reliably with the systems campuses already depend on - starting with their Student Information System.

## The Role

Integrations are the connective tissue between Element451 and the systems campuses run on - student information systems first, and learning management and other API-based systems over time. Today we sell a managed integration package: rather than handing customers an API and a manual, Element451 scopes, builds, and maintains each institution's integration for them. That model is a competitive advantage, and it needs a single owner on the delivery side. We're hiring a Senior Director, Integrations to own the entire post-sales integration lifecycle. Your organization takes the baton once a deal is signed and owns everything downstream: validating the signed SOW, architecting the integration, building it, and keeping it healthy for the life of the account. You'll lead an existing team of integration architects, integration engineers, and live support specialists. This is a hands-on leadership role, not a slide-deck one. You are the senior subject-matter expert on SIS integrations - you don't need to write the code, but you must understand deeply how these integrations are built so you can scope them, direct your architects and engineers, and pressure-test an approach yourself. This isn't a Product role, but you'll be one of Product's closest partners - helping shape what we build natively so integrations become progressively less custom over time.

## What You'll Own

- SOW validation. Own the technical handoff from Sales into Delivery. Once a deal is signed, validate that the integration as scoped and sold is technically feasible and correctly sized before your team commits to the build — and surface gaps, risks, or missing requirements early, before they become escalations.
- Integration architecture and scoping. Be the senior SME who, working with your integration architects, defines how each integration is designed — data models, sync patterns, authentication (OAuth, SAML, API keys), error handling, and how we ride frameworks like Ellucian Ethos. Set the reference patterns and standards that make every new build faster and more repeatable, and grow the IA team's depth in this space.
- Integration build. Own the integration engineering team and the delivery of every integration through build, UAT, and go-live — after which bidirectional syncs between Element451 and the SIS run as Dagster jobs (cron schedules plus event-driven sensors) over the Ethos API. Own build quality, timelines, and the tooling and runbooks that let the team deliver consistently.
- Flat-file and one-off integrations. Own integrations beyond the managed SIS set: flat-file exchanges (SFTP-delivered CSV and fixed-width files) for student information systems we don't cover with a managed connector, application-source feeds such as Common App, and bespoke one-offs — for example, syncing application data into another CRM. These are lower-volume and more custom, and your team scopes, builds, and maintains them to the same standard as everything else.
- Care and maintenance. Own the operational lifecycle after go-live: sync health and monitoring, versioning as vendor APIs change, and enhancements to live integrations. You are the senior escalation point when an integration breaks the week before decisions go out.
- Live support. Own the chat-based Live Support experience that helps customers with integration issues — staffing, quality, response standards, and the feedback loop from support back into build and architecture.
- Delivery execution: people, process, and tools. You own how the integrations function runs. Set the operating model, hire and develop the team, define the process from handoff through maintenance, and choose the tooling that makes delivery reliable and scalable. Accountable for delivery outcomes — quality, reliability, throughput — not commercial margin.
- Product partnership. Work hand in hand with Product and Engineering to shape where the platform goes on native integrations. Bring the view from the field — what customers ask for, where delivery gets hard, which patterns keep repeating — and partner on turning it into configurable, native capabilities the whole team can build on. Collaborate closely on specs, trade-offs, and sequencing so that, over time, the platform absorbs what your team handles by hand today.
- A critical voice in the integrations strategy. Help shape Element451's full integrations strategy as it expands beyond the SIS — into LMS integrations and a “Bring Your Own Integrations” model, where customers build their own integrations against our API. You bring the delivery reality to those decisions: what's feasible, what customers actually need, and where to invest so the platform and the team scale together.
- Measurement. Define and report the KPIs that prove the function works: time-to-integrate, on-time delivery against SOW, sync reliability and uptime, escalation and support volume, and resolution time.
- Serve as an escalation point. Provide the team with support when necessary with customer escalations to navigate situationally with the customer.

## Who You Are

- Deep, hands-on SIS expertise. You have real depth in at least one major student information system - ideally Ellucian Banner or Colleague via the Ethos API - and understand how campus IT, registrars, and enrollment teams actually operate.
- CRM and SIS integration exposure. Hands-on experience integrating a CRM with an SIS. The CRM doesn't have to be Element451 — Slate, Salesforce, or another enterprise or higher ed CRM is just as relevant. You understand how student and application data flows between the two systems and the pitfalls that show up in practice.
- 8+ years in integration delivery or implementation in higher ed or B2B SaaS, with 3+ years leading technical teams (architects and/or engineers). You've owned delivery outcomes across a portfolio, not just individual builds.
- A scoping and solutioning expert. You can validate a signed SOW, size effort and risk, and shape the integration approach with your architects. You hold the line on what's feasible without needing an engineer to translate for you.
- Technically fluent enough to lead the build without doing it. REST and SOAP APIs, webhooks, and scheduled and event-driven data-pipeline orchestration (we run Dagster). Comfortable with authentication patterns like API keys, bearer/session tokens, and basic auth, with integration frameworks like Ellucian Ethos, and around a Python/AWS stack (ECS, Secrets Manager, S3) with MongoDB and a Snowflake/dbt data layer. You can read a payload and pressure-test an architecture even when you're not the one writing the code.
- A team builder. You've grown and structured technical delivery teams — architecture, engineering, and support — and set the process and tooling that make delivery repeatable and reliable.
- A clear communicator who moves fluently between campus registrars, IT directors, your own engineers, executives, and Sales and Product partners.

## Nice to Have

- Experience at a higher ed SaaS company (CRM, SIS, enrollment or curriculum tech).
- Depth across more of the platforms we integrate - Workday Student, Anthology/Campus Nexus, Populi, Destiny One, or CFNC - in addition to Banner and Colleague.
- Experience turning a managed/services offering into productized, repeatable capabilities in partnership with Product.
- Hands-on with code-based orchestration (Dagster or similar), event-driven architectures, containerized deploys (Docker/AWS ECS), and integration monitoring/observability (e.g., Sentry).

## Why Element451

You'll own a function that touches every customer - integrations are often the deciding factor in whether an institution can adopt us at all. You'll inherit an established team of architects, engineers, and support specialists, executive backing, and a clear mandate: run integration delivery as a tight, reliable operation and steadily turn high-touch custom work into a scalable, productized advantage.

## Our Values

- Impactful not Immediate - We prioritize and invest in initiatives that will be most impactful.
- Progress before Perfection - We are action-oriented people. We are empowered to make decisions and achieve our goals.
- Learners before Masters - We are curious and humble people who strive to constantly improve.
- Together not Alone - We rally behind each other and pitch in to support the greater whole.
- Customer Success not Support - We solve partner goals and prioritize their success.

## About Element451

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Element451 provides an AI-native CRM and AI agent platform purpose-built for higher education to help institutions manage the full student lifecycle.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Growth Equity funded)
- **Headquarters**: Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Higher Education Technology (EdTech), AI-powered CRM, Student Engagement
- Target customers: B2B; colleges and universities (including large public universities, community college systems, and private institutions)
- Mission or purpose statement: To put AI to work for higher education, helping institutions engage students, reduce staff burden, and drive outcomes at every stage of the student lifecycle.

## Products & Services
- **Element (AI-Native CRM)**: A full-lifecycle CRM that connects data, workflows, and AI agents across every team and every stage of the student journey — from marketing and admissions to enrollment, student success, and continuing education & workforce development.
- **Bolt (AI Agent Engine)**: A platform deploying specialized AI agents across the student lifecycle. Agents work inside existing institutional systems to handle tasks like 24/7 prospect engagement, application reading and scoring, fraud detection, transcript evaluation, student risk monitoring, and proactive outreach. Specialized agents exist for Marketing, Admissions, Student Success, and CE & Workforce.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised of $184.75M (latest round: Growth Equity, $175M raised ~2 years ago)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Investors include PSG, Cultivation Capital, Blueprint Equity, London Venture Partners, Cofounders Capital, and 3 others. Key strategic partner: Encoura (announced June 2026).
- **Growth Signals**: Trusted by 350+ higher education institutions (including Columbia University, Louisiana State University, Tulane University, the North Carolina Community College System, and the University System of Georgia). Surpassed 60 million AI-powered student journeys. Reported doubled Q1 growth in 2026 and expanded executive team to support next phase of AI innovation.

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-Native Platform**: Unlike bolt-on “wraparound” agent solutions, Element451’s platform is built from the ground up with AI agents embedded in its core data and workflow engine.
- **Full Lifecycle Coverage**: Covers the entire student journey from first inquiry to graduation and beyond (including continuing education), offering a unified platform rather than point solutions.
- **Specialized Agents**: Bolt deploys agents purpose-built for specific workflows (marketing, admissions, student success) that work inside existing institutional tech stacks.
- **Proven Scale**: Supports over 60 million student journeys across 350+ institutions, demonstrating enterprise-grade reliability.

## Strategic Focus
- Current priorities include expanding AI agent capabilities across the student lifecycle, deepening strategic partnerships (e.g., with Encoura), and driving growth through AI innovation in higher education. The company is focused on addressing the “inflection point” in higher ed: declining enrollment, rising student expectations for AI-powered experiences, and staff burnout.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: The company describes itself as a group of “passionate builders, educators, visionaries, and problem solvers” who believe AI is one of the most important human inventions.
- **Impact**: Employees work on technology that directly addresses critical challenges in higher education — enrollment decline, staff workload reduction, and student success.
- **Growth Stage**: As a well-funded private company (over $184M raised) with doubled Q1 growth, Element451 is in a high-growth phase, offering potential for career advancement.
- **Work Arrangement**: Not explicitly stated, but the company is headquartered in Raleigh, NC (1 Glenwood, Floor 5). Open positions include Account Executive and Enablement Lead (per LinkedIn).
- **Notable**: The company encourages passionate candidates to submit resumes to jobs@element451.com even if no current opening matches.

## Sources
1. [element451.com](https://element451.com/)
2. [element451.com/about-us](https://element451.com/about-us)
3. [element451.com/careers](https://element451.com/careers)
4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/element451)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/element451)

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