The Deployment Strategist will lead university launches, design solutions, configure platforms, and ensure adoption of AI agents in higher education, while collaborating with cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.
About Risely AI
About the Role
What You Will Do
You'll Thrive In This Role If You:
What it Means to Work at Risely
What We Look For in our Team
Colleges are in trouble. Today, one in three students drops out, despite millions spent recruiting them. Overburdened staff manually comb through fragmented data, missing critical warning signs until it’s too late. We founded Risely to support the mission of higher education as it undergoes major systemic and technological change.
Backed by Y Combinator, we’re a VC-funded startup building the operating system for colleges. We’re not just saving hours, we’re helping protect institutions, livelihoods, and futures. Higher ed deserves better, and we’re moving fast.
Deployment Strategists lead the most important moments of truth: turning complex, messy university data and workflows into live AI agents that drive measurable results.
This is a high-ownership IC role at the intersection of strategy, product, and implementation. You’ll partner with senior university leaders, translate needs into technical specs, configure agents with our low-code toolkit, and ship production launches.
This is a fully in-person role in our San Ramon office.
To apply, please email your resume to [email protected].
- Lead end-to-end activations. Own new university launches from discovery and scoping through data integration, configuration, pilot, and rollout—keeping everyone aligned on outcomes, timelines, and risks.
- Design fit-for-purpose solutions. Map messy, real-world workflows and data (SIS/LMS/CRM, data lakes) to Risely’s capabilities. Translate goals into clear architectures, agent behaviors, governance rules, and success metrics.
- Be the trusted AI guide. Advise senior stakeholders on where AI adds leverage, how to sequence change, and what to measure. Facilitate decisions that balance ambition with practical, incremental wins.
- Configure and validate the platform. Use our low-code tooling to stand up agents, routes, and policies; partner with data/engineering to connect APIs or ETL/CSV; write and interpret basic SQL to verify joins, dedupe records, and test edge cases.
- Drive cross-functional execution. Run a tight cadence with engineering, data, and design. Turn customer needs into crisp specs, manage tradeoffs, and keep the critical path unblocked.
- Champion adoption and change. Build enablement plans, train power users, and establish feedback loops. Track activation and outcome metrics; course-correct based on what you learn in the field.
- Close the loop to product. Synthesize frontline insights into structured product requirements and UX suggestions. Pressure-test roadmap items with real workloads and propose reusable patterns.
- Support complex opportunities. Join late-stage sales calls and proofs-of-value to scope feasible pathways, articulate technical fit, and build executive confidence.
- Think from first principles: You bring order to ambiguity, breaking messy problems into clear, actionable plans.
- Execute end-to-end: You move with urgency, keep cross-functional teams on the critical path, and own outcomes through launch and adoption.
- Bridge business and tech: You build trust with executives and frontline users, and you’re comfortable discussing APIs, data models, and auth patterns, without writing production code.
- Teach and persuade: You guide organizations through change, build consensus, and help users learn new ways of working.
- Prefer configuration over custom: You value repeatability, scale, and improving the platform, not one-off solutions.
- Thrive in a lean, high-velocity environment: You like small pods, high autonomy, and direct impact on results.
- Bring relevant experience: 3+ years in roles blending technical and business skill (implementation, product management, TPM, or consulting at enterprise SaaS). Higher-ed systems experience is a strong plus.
Risely is a startup in the truest sense. We work hard, we move fast, and we embrace complexity. If you join us, here’s what you can expect:
- Real commitment, and intense pace: This isn’t a 9–5 gig. Expect long days, high intensity, and periods where we're in the office 5–6 days a week. We’re building from zero to one, and this requires commitment.
- Speed and impact: The pace here is relentless. We measure progress by the day, not by the quarter. Your work ships fast, your decisions matter immediately, and the impact you create today affects real students tomorrow.
- Mission clarity: Every line of code, every customer call, every late night ties back to one clear mission: helping students stay enrolled and helping colleges survive. If mission matters to you, it doesn't get clearer than this.
- Ownership from day one. You won't just have responsibility, you'll have ownership. Whether you're an engineer, operator, product manager, or GTM, you'll make critical decisions, drive real outcomes, and build Risely alongside the founders.
- Deep, meaningful work: You’re solving real problems every day. Data complexity, privacy laws, messy legacy integrations, this is tough, nuanced, important work.
- You want more from your career than clocking in and out.
- You're energized, not intimidated, by ambiguity and complexity.
- You get deep satisfaction from building products that change lives
- You believe hard work is worth it, especially when it directly affects students' futures.
- You're a self-starter, motivated by the chance to build something significant.
If this excites you, Risely might be the most rewarding place you'll ever work. It’ll stretch you, challenge you, and demand your best, but it'll also offer you the rare chance to build something enduring, meaningful, and profoundly impactful.
Top Skills
APIs
ETL
Low-Code Tools
SQL
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