IT Business Partner - Academic & Research

Application Open: Full-Time

Job Purpose

The IT Business Partner – Academic & Research is the strategic liaison between IT & Information Security and MBZUAI’s Academic Divisions, Research Centers, and Faculty community. The role serves as the primary point of contact for the academic and research community on IT services, products, and needs, coordinating customer demand and IT‑delivered services to mutual satisfaction.

Key Responsibilities

Faculty & Researcher Relationship Management

• Serve as the primary point of contact between IT & Information Security and MBZUAI’s Academic Divisions, Research Centers, and individual faculty and principal investigators.
• Build trusted relationships with Academic and research stakeholders to understand teaching, research, and scholarly technology needs.
• Manage expectations through regular check‑ins and structured communication, ensuring the requirements are clearly captured and progressed.

Research & Instructional Technology Adoption

• Lead adoption of IT systems, tools, and platforms used by faculty, researchers, and students – including the LMS, research computing services, collaboration platforms, AI/ML tooling, and instructional technologies.
• Support stakeholders through technology changes by preparing adoption plans, communication materials, guidance, and user readiness activities.
• Identify barriers to adoption and partner with IT and academic change stakeholders to improve the user experience and promote consistent use of approved systems.

Demand Management & Requirements Coordination

• Capture, document, and validate academic and research requirements, translating faculty and researcher needs into clear functional requirements for IT delivery teams.
• Collaborate with academic partners to define and prioritize technology initiatives that maximize academic and research value.
• Support prioritization of IT demand with portfolio and delivery teams, ensuring requests align with institutional priorities and available capacity.

Service Improvement & Faculty Issue Follow‑up

• Track recurring service issues and technology gaps impacting the academic and research community.
• Act as an escalation point for major issues affecting teaching, learning, or research delivery, and coordinate with IT service owners to ensure timely resolution.
• Review service trends and feedback to identify improvement opportunities, contribute to service improvement plans, and track customer satisfaction across the Academic & Research community.

Stakeholder Engagement & Academic Advocacy

• Advocate for MBZUAI IT, sharing its mission, vision, and strategic goals so faculty and researchers recognize their value and align requests accordingly.
• Influence academic and IT stakeholders to advance initiatives that benefit the University as a whole.
• Facilitate steering meetings, design sessions, and retrospectives to drive clarity and outcomes for faculty‑facing initiatives.

Higher Education Trends & Strategic Insight

• Stay informed on higher education and AI research trends, including peer institution benchmarks and the future direction of academic computing, research IT, and AI‑enabled scholarship.

Portfolio, Reporting & Insights Support

• Maintain visibility of Academic and Research technology requests, initiatives, risks, and dependencies.
• Define, negotiate, and report on key service metrics aligned with strategic academic goals.
• Provide status updates and dashboards on engagement, adoption, and open issues; contribute demand insights to the IT portfolio function; and escalates risks and bottlenecks through appropriate governance channels.

Process, Governance & Documentation

• Maintain structured documentation of requirements, decisions, and stakeholder commitments.
• Ensure that technology requests comply with approved IT governance, information security, research data protection, and ethical AI requirements.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of IT engagement models, templates, and communication standards.

Other Duties

• Perform all other duties as reasonably directed by the line manager that are commensurate with these functional objectives.

Academic Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Educational Technologies, Business Administration, Higher Education Administration, or a related field.

Professional Experience

Essential

• 5+ years of experience in business relationship management, IT business partnering, technology adoption, or digital transformation roles, with demonstrated experience providing high‑level technology client services.
• Demonstrated experience acting as a bridge between business stakeholders and IT teams.
• Experience capturing business requirements, coordinating IT demand, and supporting technology‑enabled service improvements.
• Strong stakeholder management experience, including engagement with senior users, faculty, researchers, or operational leaders.
• Experience supporting change management, user adoption, communications, and readiness activities for technology initiatives.
• Strong ability to manage multiple priorities, follow up on actions, and drive issue resolution across teams.
• Excellent communication, documentation, and facilitation skills.

Preferred

• Experience providing technology services in a higher education, research‑intensive, or professional setting.
• Experience discussing technology products and decisions directly with faculty.
• Familiarity with ERP systems, CRM, SIS, collaboration tools, and other enterprise platforms.