Tessitura Administrator

The Folger Shakespeare Library, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, seeks a Tessitura Administrator to support and advance the organization’s use of the Tessitura CRM as part of our IT team. Reporting to the Head of IT, the Tessitura Administrator is the organization’s technical steward for the Tessitura CRM. This role focuses on system configuration, data governance, integrations, reporting, testing, and documentation. The Tessitura Administrator partners with teams across the institution to understand business needs, translate them into clear technical specifications, and implement structured, well-documented changes that improve data reliability and operational consistency.  

This is a platform-level role: the administrator supports system logic, configuration standards, and data quality, while operational activities such as event builds, season setups, pricing configuration, and ticketing workflows remain owned by the relevant team. The individual will be working with departments across the entire institution, including Visitor Experience, Folger Institute, Education, Artistic Programs, Development, Marketing and Communications, and Finance. The position requires strong technical skills, analytical discipline, and the ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical users. 

The standard schedule for this role is Monday–Friday, 8:45am–4:45 pm, which is a 35-hour work week. The candidate must have the ability to work varying additional hours as project demands arise (including evenings and weekends, as necessary). This position is a hybrid role; a formal schedule will be agreed upon between the manager and individual. The selected candidate will need to be within a commutable distance to the D.C. office (DC, MD, VA) by their start date. 

Health & Safety: The health and well-being of all staff, contractors, and visitors is our top priority. While the Folger no longer requires masks or vaccinations (except for AEA spaces), we support and encourage individuals to take the safety precautions they are most comfortable with, and we ask that individual choices are respected. The Folger offers organization-funded healthcare plans for full-time staff and extensive leave options to all staff in the case of any health issues that arise.  

Compensation:  

• This is a semi-monthly-paid salary position, with a pay range of $70,000-74,000.   

• Total compensation includes an extensive benefits plan, including fully covered health, dental, and vision insurance for the individual and a generous 403b contribution and match, outlined at https://www.folger.edu/employee-benefits.   

Duties: 

System Administration & Configuration 

• Configures and maintains Tessitura components supporting ticketing, fundraising, membership, reporting, and online engagement.  

• Manages user roles, permissions, and security groups using least-privilege principles.  

• Evaluates proposed configuration changes and upgrades; documents expected impacts, risks, and required decisions.  

• Develops and executes testing plans for configuration changes, integrations, and data workflows.  

• Maintains system architecture documentation, configuration decisions, and workflow diagrams.  

• Ensures all system changes follow defined SOPs and change-management practices. 

Data Governance and Quality 

• Defines and maintains data standards, including required fields, deduplication rules, address formats, segmentation practices, and data-entry policies.  

• Coordinates recurring data quality reviews and cleanup cycles with operational teams.  

• Performs and documents record merges following approved rules.  

• Maintains auditable change logs that clearly record what changed, why, and with what expected effect. 

Integrations and Data Workflows 

• Maintains and troubleshoots integrations between Tessitura and external systems used for marketing, online transactions, reporting, and visitor-facing processes.  

• Manages recurring imports, exports, batch jobs, and API-driven workflows.  

• Documents all integration points, data flows, dependencies, and assumptions.  

• Identifies opportunities for automation or workflow simplification and propose actionable improvements. 

Reporting and Analytics 

• Writes and optimizes SQL queries for reporting, audits, data corrections, and exploratory analysis.  

• Builds and maintains standardized reports and dashboards used for operational, financial, and strategic decision-making.  

• Defines and maintains data tagging and coding schemes that support segmentation, attribution, and longitudinal analysis.  

• Replaces manual/ad-hoc reporting with repeatable, version-controlled outputs.  

• Supports reconciliation of Tessitura data with other internal systems and datasets. 

Technical Planning and Implementation 

• Conducts structured discovery to understand underlying business needs, data requirements, and process constraints.  

• Translates needs into clear, testable technical specifications that describe desired logic, fields, workflows, and reporting outputs.  

• Presents options and trade-offs to stakeholders and confirm decisions before implementation.  

• Leads the implementation of approved specifications through configuration, integration work, reporting updates, or workflow adjustments.  

• Defines and executes testing plans; documents results, follow-up actions, and long-term considerations.  

• Communicates status, risks, and required decisions in a clear and concise written form.  

• Documents final outcomes, configuration decisions, and any associated SOP updates. 

Training Documentation, Issue Resolution, and Technical Support 

• Develops accessible training materials and change briefings for new features, processes, or data standards.  

• Delivers targeted training sessions focused on task-specific workflows, data-entry expectations, or new functionality.  

• Maintains a CRM Administration Runbook that includes SOPs, configuration procedures, change-management protocols, and data-governance rules. 

• Serves as the primary technical contact for Tessitura-related issues.  

• Troubleshoots system issues: reproduce problems, identify root causes, document resolutions, and track recurring patterns.  

• Serves as the primary liaison with the Tessitura Network for any issue escalation, clarification, and resolution.  

• Proactively identifies opportunities to improve usability, data quality, staff efficiency, or system reliability. 

Education and Experience: 

Required 

• 3–5 years of experience administering Tessitura or performing advanced power-user/system configuration work in a similar CRM.  

• Experience supporting ticketing, fundraising, membership, or CRM operations in cultural, nonprofit, or performing-arts environments.  

• Proficiency in SQL (SELECT, JOIN, WHERE) for reporting and data diagnostics.  

• Experience reconciling or validating data across systems.  

• Demonstrated ability to produce clear documentation (SOPs, runbooks, technical notes, training guides). 

Preferred 

• Experience managing integrations, batch workflows, or API-based processes.  

• Experience contributing to data-governance or access-control practices.  

• Familiarity with version-control workflows or structured change-management practices. 

Skills and Knowledge: 

• Strong understanding of Tessitura data structures and configuration patterns.  

• Ability to develop and test configuration changes, integrations, and workflows in a disciplined manner.  

• Knowledge of data integrity practices, deduplication logic, and data-tagging schemes for analytics.  

• Ability to evaluate proposed system changes and articulate impacts clearly. 

• Ability to restate business needs clearly and confirm understanding before implementation.  

• Ability to explain technical decisions, trade-offs, and limitations in non-jargon language.  

• Strong analytical reasoning and structured problem-solving skills. 

Working Conditions and Physical Requirements: 

This job operates in a professional office environment. The employee may be exposed to various components of an office environment, such as fluorescent lighting, pollen, dust, recycled air, cooling fans, semi-enclosed areas, central heating, seasonal warmer temperatures, and office noise. The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.  

• Normal work week is Monday-Friday, 8:45am-4:45pm. Available for occasional after-hours work related to infrastructure maintenance or emergency troubleshooting. 

• Generally, normal office working conditions. The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet.  

• Requires physical agility, with the ability to squat, twist, and bend as needed. Ability to lift and carry weights up to 20 lbs and pull carts loaded with up to 40lbs of equipment.  

• Ability to work at a computer for an extended period, with accuracy.  

• Willingness and capacity to work in an office environment at a workstation, and to come and go repeatedly throughout the day as is necessary, to perform various responsibilities.  

• Capacity to communicate, in person, or using video, phone, or electronic communication methods, in a manner which can be understood by others.