Department: Executive Administration
Classification: Administrative Faculty
Job Category: Administrative or Professional Faculty
Job Type: Full-Time
Work Schedule: Full-time (1.0 FTE, 40 hrs/wk)
Location: Fairfax, VA
Workplace Type: Hybrid Eligible
Sponsorship Eligibility: Not eligible for visa sponsorship
Salary: Salary commensurate with education and experience
Criminal Background Check: Yes
Financial Background Check: Yes
About the Department:
The George Mason University Office of the President works with senior administration and stakeholders from across the institution to establish and advance the university's vision, strategic goals, and priorities.
About the Position:
Reporting to the Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff, the Director, Budget Operations and Planning is responsible for leading the budget planning, oversight, and forecasting processes across all units within the Executive Administration division. Serving as a key strategic advisor to the President, this position provides high-quality budget and financial analysis to support data-informed decision-making on matters of significant institutional impact.
This position ensures that the President's strategic priorities are effectively translated into comprehensive multi-year pro-formas, annual operating, and accurate forecasts. The Director collaborates with EA senior leaders and their staff to drive budget and operational planning for new initiatives and projects; provide budget consultation; support facilities planning and acquisition; conduct management analysis; and coordinate special projects.
In addition, this position oversees the fiscal infrastructure and systems that support the division's goals. The Director is accountable for the division's overall fiscal health, by identifying risks, developing mitigation strategies, preparing reports and dashboards, and aligning resources with strategic objectives. This position focuses on strategic efforts to improve efficiency by capturing meaningful financial data, streamlining processes, sharing best practices across the EA division, and fostering continuous improvement in the budget and fiscal systems and operations.
This position ensures that the President's strategic priorities are effectively translated into comprehensive multi-year financial plans, annual operating and capital budgets, and accurate financial forecasts. The Director collaborates with unit leaders and their finance staff to drive financial planning for new initiatives and projects; provides budget consultation and support; conducts management analysis; and coordinates special projects.
Responsibilities:
Budget Operations and Planning- Leads the implementation of divisional budget planning, fiscal operations, and forecasting processes in collaboration with EA's senior leadership, the Provost Office, and other university leaders;
- Designs and manages planning processes with clear deliverables, training, and communications to ensure consistency and transparency across EA units;
- Ensures the accuracy, quality, and timeliness of budget information and strategic advice related to multi-year plans, annual budgets, and forecasts;
- Creates and updates unit-specific and EA division-wide financial dashboards for ease of reporting and understanding financial, budget, and personnel metrics;
- Partners with unit leaders to align financial resources with unit-level goals and Presidential priorities; and
- Oversees all EA unit budgets across multiple funding sources, ensuring effective and forward-looking budget management, monitoring, and reporting.
Budget Analysis and Risk Management
- Identifies internal and external factors and trends that may impact outcomes;
- Evaluates risks and proposes actionable solutions;
- Prepares and presents regular and ad hoc budget and financial analyses for the President and Chief of Staff to inform strategic decision-making; and
- Advances and refines forecasting and budgeting methodologies and processes to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and align with best practices in public higher education financial management.
Stakeholder Engagement and Best Practices- Liaises with senior leaders from all Presidential units, to operationalize unit budget and operational p