Public Service - Higher Education Management Consulting Manager

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ABOUT THE PRACTICE

Higher education is in the middle of one of the most significant operational transformations it has seen in decades. Institutions are rethinking how they manage finance, HR, payroll, procurement, and research administration, moving away from legacy systems and fragmented processes toward integrated platforms that can support the pace and complexity of a modern university or college.

The stakes are real. These are not back-office projects. They touch every faculty member, every department administrator, every researcher managing a grant, every employee waiting on a paycheck. Done well, they unlock institutional capacity that was previously buried in manual processes and disconnected systems. Done poorly, they create disruption that takes years to recover from.

Our Higher Education practice is in the middle of this transformation, working with universities, four-year colleges, and community colleges on the implementations that matter most to them. We are looking for practitioners who find this work genuinely compelling and bring the domain depth to do it well.

 

THE WORK

You will own the functional tower in your domain, whether Finance, HR, Payroll, Procurement, or Research Administration, on Cloud ERP implementations for college and university clients. That means leading design, driving decisions, managing the client relationships within your workstream, and being accountable for the quality of what gets delivered.

Higher education is not a simpler version of corporate or government ERP work; it is fundamentally different. Finance functions are decentralized across colleges, departments, and research units. HR operates in a shared governance environment where faculty have a voice in institutional decisions. Payroll spans multiple bargaining units with distinct contracts and pay rules. Procurement intersects with sponsored programs in ways that create unique compliance obligations. For research universities, the sponsored research enterprise, including effort reporting, indirect cost recovery, sub-award management, and cost transfers, adds a layer of complexity that has to be designed for from the start, not discovered later.

What makes a practitioner effective in this environment is not just platform knowledge. It is understanding how universities actually make decisions, how change lands in a shared governance culture, and how the design choices made in one tower affect operations across the institution for years. We are not looking for someone who covers every domain; we are looking for someone who owns one and brings that depth to every room they walk into.

 

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Lead the functional tower in your domain, whether Finance, HR, Payroll, Procurement, or Research Administration, on Cloud ERP implementations for universities, four-year colleges, and community colleges.

• Own design decisions within your tower, drawing on both platform capability and a real understanding of how higher education institutions operate, including the decentralized structures, shared governance dynamics, and cross-functional dependencies that shape every design choice.

• Build and maintain strong working relationships with client functional leaders in your domain, such as VPs of Finance, Controllers, HR Directors, Payroll Directors, Chief Procurement Officers, Sponsored Programs Directors, or Grants Managers, and engage with them as a peer who understands their world.

• Lead stakeholder engagement and change management within your tower, recognizing that adoption in higher education requires navigating shared governance, decentralized departmental cultures, and stakeholders who will scrutinize every design decision.

• Navigate integration complexity by understanding how your tower connects to other enterprise systems, student platforms, research administration systems, and state or federal reporting environments, and by designing with those dependencies in mind.

• Apply AI-assisted analysis, workflow design, and delivery acceleration as part of how you work day to day, not as an add-on but as a standard method that improves quality and speed.

• Communicate clearly on status, risk, and decisions to senior stakeholders, including awareness of how implementation milestones interact with board reporting cycles and audit timelines.

• Contribute to proposals and pursuits by bringing domain credibility that resonates with higher education evaluators who are looking for practitioners that understand their institution, not just their software.

Travel: Ability to travel 50%+.

WHAT YOU NEED

Required:

• Minimum 5 years of consulting or functional experience in higher education or community college environments with deep functional expertise in at least one domain: institutional finance and budget operations, HR and academic workforce management, payroll administration, procurement and purchasing compliance, or research administration and sponsored programs.

• Minimum 5 years of hands-on delivery experience with a Cloud ERP platform in a functional or technical capacity with experience leading a functional tower or workstream on a large-scale ERP engagement, with responsibility for design, delivery, and client engagement within your domain.

 

Preferred:

• Bachelor's degree
• Finance: experience with enrollment-driven budget modeling, GASB fund accounting, endowment accounting, or board and audit committee reporting in a Cloud ERP Financials context. Familiarity with how decentralized college and departmental finance structures affect system design.

• HR: experience with faculty appointment structures, academic workforce planning, classification and compensation, or HR transformation in a Cloud ERP HCM context. Experience navigating shared governance environments and designing for both centralized HR and distributed departmental HR functions.

• Payroll: experience with multi-bargaining-unit payroll configuration, faculty and staff pay structures, or complex leave and benefit plans in a Cloud ERP Payroll context.

• Procurement: experience with higher education purchasing compliance, requisition-to-pay processes, grant-funded procurement, or the intersection of procurement and sponsored programs in a Cloud ERP Procurement context.

• Research Administration: experience with sponsored programs finance, effort reporting, indirect cost recovery, sub-award management, cost transfer processes, or grant lifecycle management in a higher education ERP or research administration system context. Familiarity with federal sponsor requirements (NIH, NSF, DoD) and 2 CFR 200 compliance as they apply to system design.

• Prior experience working within a college, university, or community college in a finance, HR, payroll, procurement, or sponsored programs function, with an understanding of the institution from the inside.

• Experience with data migration complexity in higher education, including payroll history, position control records, grant encumbrances, or other sensitive historical data that requires careful conversion strategy.

• Familiarity with AI-assisted delivery methods or platform-native AI capabilities in Cloud ERP platforms.

 

Compensation at Accenture varies depending on a wide array of factors, which may include but are not limited to the specific office location, role, skill set, and level of experience. As required by local law, Accenture provides a reasonable range of compensation for roles that may be hired as set forth below.
We anticipate this job posting will be posted until 11/09/2026.

Accenture offers a market competitive suite of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, and long-term disability coverage, a 401(k) plan, bonus opportunities, paid holidays, and paid time off. See more information on our benefits here:

U.S. Employee Benefits | Accenture

Role Location Annual Salary Range
California $94,400 to $293,800
Colorado $94,400 to $253,800
Connecticut $94,400 to $253,800
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Minnesota $94,400 to $253,800
New York $87,400 to $293,800
New Jersey $100,500 to $293,800
Ohio $87,400 to $235,000
Virginia $87,400 to $270,300
Washington $100,500 to $270,300

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