Senior Solutions Architect, Registrar & Admissions
Job Description:
We are seeking a versatile, hands-on higher education domain expert to join Smart Panda Tools as our Senior Solutions Architect, Registrar & Admissions. This is a high-visibility, mid-level “multi-tool” role for a practitioner who loves rolling up their sleeves to get work done. Sitting directly between our higher education clients and our internal software engineering teams, you will combine deep, real-world campus operational experience with technical curiosity to execute across client onboarding, pre-sales support, functional software testing, and issue resolution.
You will be our primary hands-on authority on registrar and admissions workflows, translating complex university processes into actionable software requirements, executing client configurations, and making sure our tools work seamlessly in real campus environments. There is genuine design and planning in the role, but it stays close to the ground: you will spend as much time mapping data and testing configurations as you will planning them.
Why Join Us?
Smart Panda Tools builds the enterprise infrastructure that higher education institutions rely on to modernize transcript evaluation, automate credit articulation, and protect their academic authority. Our Student Mobility Suite is used by nearly 250 universities to process millions of transcripts without replacing the systems those institutions already depend on.
We are a team of higher education veterans, engineers, and enrollment operations experts. Many of us have sat in the Registrar’s chair, managed enterprise IT systems, and built the infrastructure to connect them. We build the technology we wish we had.
The people who thrive here care deeply about operational detail and student outcomes. They want to understand why institutions work the way they do before proposing a change. They bring strong opinions while remaining curious, and design for the specific rather than the generic.
Administrative friction should never obstruct the path to great education.
Key Responsibilities:
- Hands-On Client Implementation & Configuration: Execute client onboarding end-to-end. Work directly with university registrar and admissions staff on detailed data mapping, workflow setup, policy rule configuration, and system go-live readiness.
- Product Testing, Design & Engineering Liaison: Act as the primary functional bridge between clients and engineering. Translate campus policy and data structures into functional software specifications, write user stories/test cases, perform hands-on User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and validate feature releases before they reach clients.
- Tactical Pre-Sales & Demonstration Support: Partner with the sales team during discovery calls, RFPs, and product demonstrations by running technical/functional deep dives and proving real-world value to prospective registrar and admissions leadership.
- Cross-Functional Issue Escalation & Resolution: Act as the lead SME for escalated functional support tickets. Troubleshoot complex client edge cases in transfer credit and admissions workflows alongside customer support and development teams.
- Domain Expertise & Operational Guidance: Maintain a deep understanding of evolving transfer articulation standards, accreditation requirements, and SIS configurations (PeopleSoft, Banner, etc.) to ensure our products and implementations reflect true institutional needs.
Required Qualifications:
- 6+ years of direct, hands-on experience working in college or university Registrar or Admissions offices across multiple higher education institutions.
- Deep functional expertise in new student admissions, transfer credit evaluation, course articulation, and campus administrative workflows.
- Extensive experience as an active power user or administrator with enterprise SIS platforms, specifically PeopleSoft Campus Solutions or Ellucian Banner.
- Proven track record of hands-on software rollout: Direct experience configuring, testing, or implementing higher education administrative software or modules.
- Technical literacy: Comfortable reading data models, analyzing integration workflows, reviewing API logic, and working daily with software engineers in an agile environment.
- Strong execution mindset: A “multi-tool” practitioner comfortable switching gears fluidly between writing test specs, running a client kickoff call, mapping data fields, and answering a support escalation.
- Communication: Ability to build immediate, peer-to-peer trust with university registrars, admissions directors, and IT staff.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration, Information Systems, or a related field.
- Prior experience at an EdTech vendor or higher education implementation consultancy.
- Familiarity with data formats (JSON, CSV, XML), web APIs, or batch data ingestion processes.
Good to Know:
- This is a hands-on, individual contributor role, not a people-management position. The title can flex between Solutions Architect and Senior Solutions Architect based on depth of experience.
- Reports to the VP of Support and Engineering.
- Expect day-to-day cross-functional execution across pre-sales, client onboarding, support, and product QA.