Rize is a higher education company in partnership with the Lower Cost Models for Independent Colleges (LCMC) Consortium. The LCMC, formed in 2015, is pioneering an innovative course-sharing model to help private colleges and universities grow enrollment through new degree programs while streamlining and lowering institutional costs. 

Rize provides the LCMC with the platform that powers this collaborative model, allowing member institutions to adopt high-demand majors, minors and certificates that are built to get students ready for careers in the fastest-growing fields.

Rize Education

Head of Data <h2>Rize Education Overview</h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>Mission: fundamentally transform higher education and provide every student with an enjoyable and risk-free pathway to a fulfilling career</li><li>Initial Problem: colleges desperately need to increase enrollment &amp; improve outcomes, but can’t afford the upfront investment &amp; costs for new degree programs</li><li>Solution: high-quality, flexible degree programs that dramatically reduce cost and risk. By enabling colleges to incorporate new online courses from other institutions, Rize provides non-profit, accredited colleges &amp; universities with the fastest and most affordable way to add skills-based majors &amp; minors for college credit</li><li>Funding: raised Series B in 2023 from top VCs to pursue significant growth and product improvements. Projected to be profitable by Fall 2025 with no need for additional funding. Currently pursuing additional funding for accelerated growth</li></ul><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>Team: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.rize.education/team">40+ person team</a> that includes college athletes, educators, Jeopardy! participants, Ivy Leaguers, and hustlers who paid their own way through community college, all with the shared goal of improving education for current and future generations</li></ul><h2>The Role</h2>Rize powers over 550 academic programs for approximately 100 colleges in our network that are seeking innovative ways to grow enrollment and improve student outcomes. We have built an incredible team, all working toward our primary goal: creating the educational product that will transform the college experience by increasing transparency and ROI. We are looking to add an analytical, thoughtful, empathetic, and high-output individual who will be excited and motivated by the high standard of excellence we seek to maintain.The Head of Data will be responsible for leading the strategy and execution of data management, analytics, and insights in order to drive business decisions and optimize performance at Rize. As we grow, reliable and efficient data analysis becomes more important as key decisions' complexity and feedback loops grow. Therefore, we are seeking a Head of Data who combines technical expertise with a collaborative and empathetic attitude. This hire will help us build data infrastructure that will drive strategic business decisions at Rize, from product improvements to market growth initiatives. As the first Head of Data, and at the helm of a relatively new team, you will be defining foundational data structures and practices at the organization, helping build visualization and dashboard deliverables, and influencing the professional futures of tens of thousands, and eventually hundreds of thousands, of students. You will report to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-mccarthy-31882051/">Connor</a> (our co-founder / COO), manage <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andurooo/overlay/about-this-profile/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base%3BVajIG4vnTcmQB%2FMQAYaJ8Q%3D%3D">Andrew</a> (our Data Engineering Lead), and work closely with all teams and managers to ensure we accurately and efficiently disseminate our data infrastructure throughout the company. If you are looking for a data science and engineering role that allows you to have an immediate positive impact on the lives of thousands and provides you with a high level of technical autonomy and ownership, this role may be right for you. Your main focus will be collecting data needs from the team and working backwards to build data deliverables and pipelines that will allow Rize to:<ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>Use a data-driven approach to improve understanding of student experiences and to guide our decisions on where to invest in product improvements</li><li>Provide leadership team with clear, accurate updates of progress toward company KPIs</li><li>Enhance continuous monitoring of student experiences to enable more rapid interventions, leading to improved student outcomes</li><li>Leverage data analysis to understand our partners' student recruitment processes, empowering our enrollment marketing team to offer more targeted assistance</li><li>Gather and analyze data on contract performance to inform where our partner success team should focus their efforts</li><li>Own the company’s internal business intelligence function, partner with team leads across the organization to improve operating leverage, and ultimately deliver an excellent product experience</li></ul>You will be tasked with the following responsibilities when working on these projects:<h2>Responsibilities</h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>Understand the business data needs - exploratory conversations, dashboard prototyping, metric design, etc to understand what a data solution looks like that effectively answers business questions.</li><li>Transparently project manage - spec out workstreams for new projects that enable transparency and regular updates for the relevant internal teams, so everyone feels aligned and informed.</li><li>Design and implement best practices amidst ambiguity - as the first Head of Data at Rize, you will have to navigate considerable ambiguity as to how a brand new “Data team” should function within our existing org chart and corporate processes. </li><li>Design and build data collection pipelines - working backwards from business needs or team requests, design thoughtful data collection strategies that follow engineering best practices and are in line with the expectations of users.</li><li>Ensure data quality and security - implement systems that guarantee integrity, accuracy, and consistency. Adopt security measures to safeguard data and regulate access levels, ensuring adherence to data privacy laws and regulations.</li><li>Data modeling and warehouse architecture - design the overall data warehouse architecture that supports our operations and the data model schemas that are optimal for our use cases. Monitor the data systems performance and optimize data processes and queries for efficient operations.</li><li>Data visualization - assist analysts in building and optimizing complex queries and data visualizations in Tableau.</li></ul><h2>Qualifications</h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>You have a Master's degree in Data Science or Data Analytics, or have equivalent experience in the field.</li><li>You are willing to roll up your sleeves and do individual contributor work, where necessary.</li><li>You are able to translate business needs into data and engineering needs reliably and efficiently. You can effectively straddle the line between Data and other teams at Rize.</li><li>You have 7+ years of experience as a data scientist, data engineer, or similar position and have helped lead a Data Team at a previous organization.</li><li>You have worked at a smaller company before, or within a very small Data team, so you have seen what it takes to stand up new collaborative processes and procedures.</li><li>You can translate ambiguous business requirements into a clear implementation strategy, and efficiently communicate technical concepts to non-technical people.</li><li>You have experience building systems in a team environment, sharing knowledge through documentation, code reviews, and peer mentoring. You are willing to give and receive candid feedback.</li><li>You’re proficient in complex data analysis, predictive modeling, and statistical analysis. You can present complex data findings in a clear and understandable manner using visualization tools like Tableau, Power BI, or similar.</li><li>You have demonstrable expertise building data pipelines using Python and SQL. You can fine-tune the performance of SQL queries.</li><li>You have proficiency in modern database modeling techniques and are skilled in using serverless cloud databases, such as BigQuery and Redshift.</li><li>You are humble and thoughtful. You are willing and motivated to approach all tasks with your full effort, no matter how small, and you are able to work independently and in a fast-paced start-up environment.</li><li>NYC preferred, remote okay (we are a remote-first company but would love you to come in 2-3x/week most weeks if you are based in NYC).</li></ul><h2>Compensation</h2>Compensation will vary with experience, but a rough range will be:<ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>Salary: $215,000 - $250,000<ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li>Potential for incentive compensation</li></ul></li><li>Equity: 8,000 - 10,000 shares</li></ul><h2>Press and Publications</h2><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-03-31-the-higher-education-model-is-broken-together-we-can-fix-it">The Higher Education Model is Broken. Together We Can Fix It.</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2021/09/09/expert-view-sharing-courses-could-help-small-priv.html">Expert View: Sharing courses could help small private colleges survive</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lucielapovsky/2019/02/01/what-to-do-about-the-high-costs-of-higher-education-one-model-of-school-collaboration/?sh=7bbe402a18da">What To Do About The High Costs Of Higher Education: One Model Of School Collaboration</a>