Organization Overview

At the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE), we champion effective financial education. We are the independent, centralizing voice providing leadership, research, and collaboration to advance financial well-being. We do this by mobilizing and inspiring educators, researchers, and advocates nationwide to maximize the impact of financial education. We work hard to remove barriers, amplify outcomes, and elevate effective models through leadership, research, and collaboration. We believe this is important because everyone deserves the opportunity to live their best financial life and that equitable and effective financial education makes it easier for everyone to navigate the financial system, creating a more just society.

Position Summary

The Director, Business Applications & Integration leads and executes the phased modernization, integration, and optimization of the organization’s core business systems over a multi-year roadmap aligned with strategic priorities and organizational capacity.

We are a nationally recognized organization operating with a focused team and a business systems landscape that is actively evolving. We are strengthening our application foundation and integrations while improving consistency and stability. This role serves as the organization’s senior technical lead for business applications and integrations in a fast-moving, build-and-improve environment.

This is a director-level individual contributor role that leads major initiatives end-to-end without direct people management. The role provides lateral leadership across teams, guiding implementation, facilitating decisions, and driving adoption, while taking ownership for delivery through stabilization. Success requires high autonomy, strong relationships, and the ability to translate ambiguity into durable, scalable solutions.

The Director partners closely with the Senior Manager of Technology to ensure alignment between business applications and infrastructure, identity, and security standards.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below represent the knowledge, skill, or ability required.

• Build strong cross-functional relationships using emotional intelligence and lateral leadership to ensure systems are understood, adopted and aligned with business needs, applying a lightweight equity lens to avoid barriers.
• Translate architecture decisions, trade-offs, and integration impacts into clear recommendations for executives and non-technical stakeholders, enabling timely decisions and adoption.
• Lead and execute phased modernization and integration of core business applications over a multi-year roadmap, working with high autonomy, turning ambiguity into action and leading laterally to keep delivery moving.
• Collaborate with the Senior Manager of Technology and external providers to align application-layer changes with infrastructure, identity, and security requirements, surfacing risks early without slowing execution.
• Lead technical aspects of system transitions to ensure stable, effective rollouts through sequencing, transition planning, enablement materials and adoption support for varied work styles.
• Lead hands-on implementations (configuration, customization, data migration, testing, deployment) with limited guidance, proactively managing dependencies and ensuring stable rollouts.
• Design and personally implement integrations using APIs, automation tools, middleware and structured data synchronization methods, iterating quickly and hardening solutions for reliability as needs evolve.
• Design and implement KPI metrics and reporting pipelines that reduce manual entry and strengthen business intelligence, partnering with stakeholders on clear definitions and organization-wide usability.
• Develop and maintain cross-system data models, documentation and governance standards to sustain consistency, clarity, and long-term maintainability across teams.
• Evaluate, integrate, or rationalize third-party systems and data sources to improve cohesion and reduce fragmentation, facilitating trade-offs with stakeholder empathy and practical decision-making.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex system issues (integration failures, workflow breakdowns, data inconsistencies) with clear communication, rapid stabilization and prevention-focused follow-through.
• Design and implement secure digital platforms for public engagement and internal operations, ensuring accessibility, performance and integration with internal systems while coordinating effectively with vendors.
• Build and refine content and collaboration environments (information architecture, org-wide frameworks, permission structures, document lifecycle governance) through strong partnership and equitable access.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in information systems, computer science, business technology, or related field; equivalent experience considered
• Minimum 7–8 years of progressive experience in business application architecture, systems integration, or digital platform implementation
• Demonstrated experience personally building and maintaining integrations between enterprise SaaS platforms
• Experience designing and implementing organization-wide content or document management environments, including information architecture and governance frameworks
• Hands-on experience working with APIs, automation tools, data migration processes, and integration platforms
• Experience designing reporting or business intelligence pipelines that reduce manual processes and improve data reliability
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft ecosystem tools, including Dynamics CRM, Business Central, Power BI, and SharePoint environments
• Experience working within organizations that utilize Managed Service Providers for infrastructure and security operations
• Strong analytical, systems-thinking, and technical problem-solving skills
• Demonstrated experience building internal technical capability and reducing reliance on external consultants
• Experience evaluating AI-enabled enterprise tools, automation platforms, or intelligent workflow solutions within data-sensitive environments
• Demonstrated success leading complex initiatives as an individual contributor using lateral leadership to coordinate cross-functional work and drive outcomes.
• Proven ability to operate with high autonomy in ambiguity, independently scoping, prioritizing, and executing solutions through stabilization with minimal supervision.
• Strong relationship-building and emotional intelligence, with a track record of earning stakeholder buy-in and driving adoption through an equitable lens, so solutions are accessible and usable across roles and levels of technical comfort.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working within a nonprofit or mid-sized organization
• Experience leading business system modernization initiatives over multi-year roadmaps
• Experience consolidating and integrating third-party data sources into reporting environments
• Experience with digital analytics and web performance measurement tools

Physical/Mental Demands of the Job

Work hours are generally 8:30 AM -5:00 PM Monday – Friday – up to 50% remote work is offered under normal circumstances. Employees work directly with their supervisor and HR to determine the best work schedule, providing sufficient overlap with other NEFE employees.

At NEFE we focus on possibilities not limitations. To do your job effectively, you need the ability to communicate with people; move about a workspace; utilize a computer, job-related software and a telephone. We will attempt to make reasonable accommodations to support the fulfillment of the physical and mental requirements of this position.

Travel Required

Minimum travel is expected with this position.