Sponsored Research Manager

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Job Summary

The Sponsored Research Manager is a critical member of the PMA Division leadership team and oversees all aspects of Research Administration for the Division of Physics, Math, and Astronomy. The Sponsored Research Manager provides broad fiscal oversight for the management of sponsored research funds, discretionary funds, and other sources of faculty funding. The position supervises the Division Grant Managers and directs all aspects of the proposal administration including pre-award, post-award, closeout, and audit activities. The manager works closely with other campus administrative offices to strategically and proactively manage the administration of the division’s sponsored programs ensuring compliance with all federal requirements and costing principles, grantor restrictions, and institute policies. This position directly interacts with faculty and professional staff providing guidance regarding the administration of federal and non-federal awards, centers, private contracts, and subcontracts. The manager acts as the primary resource for the division concerning regulatory requirements and changes. Under minimal direction, the Sponsored Research Manager applies specialized knowledge and expertise for financial analyses of grants and contracts to provide complex financial reports, identify potential award problems and recommend solutions. The Sponsored Research Manager may maintain a research portfolio consisting of new or complex research groups.

Essential Job Duties

• Provides oversight and direction for both pre-award activities and post-award accounting and compliance activities to ensure an effective sponsored grants management program.
• Responsible for the development and comprehensive training of effective processes, procedures and tools required to manage the research administration across the division.
• Develops and implements standardized sponsored research policies and procedures, best practices, reporting formats, and reporting schedules for all grant managers.
• Regularly reviews best practices, policies, procedures, and workflow for areas of responsibility, and implements changes as necessary to improve accuracy, efficiency, and timeliness, ensuring that services meet the needs of the Division and the Institute.
• Supervises the team of Grant Managers who have hybrid work schedules.
• Oversees and authorizes/makes weighted recommendations on HR actions including new hires, promotions, reclassifications, salary adjustments, disciplinary actions, transfers, terminations, and performance evaluations.
• Assigns and checks work of others to ensure consistent quality services and support for all research administration activities.
• Assesses training needs for Grant Managers and identifies or develops training opportunities to update their skills consistent with the changing needs of the Division, the Institute, and sponsoring agencies. Develops workload analysis, monitors and adjusts distribution and assignments to meet the needs of the division.
• Ensure that all required reporting to Principal Investigators is done timely and accurately; assists the Grant Managers as needed to complete complex reports.
• Interprets and advises faculty and management on policies and procedures, agency regulations, Application deadlines, agency reports, award-related requests, and no-cost extensions.
• Provides guidance for faculty and research staff regarding procurement regulations to assist in determining the allow ability of individual transactions related to sponsored projects.
• Develops or makes recommendations regarding the non-scientific portions of proposals including budget/cost estimates and projections; identifies administrative issues requiring further review.
• In conjunction with institute personnel, ensures that terms and condition of each award are consisted with Institute policies and acceptable to the Principal Investigator; assures procedural compliance with all grant requirements, including those related to animal use, controlled substances, radioactive materials, and campus facilities.
• Ensures funding use meets regulatory guidelines and works to resolve compliance issues; ensures that Division policies, practices, and financial controls are in compliance with Institute policies, procedures, and all applicable state/federal regulations.
• Designs, develops, and analyzes reports on the status of research and faculty discretionary accounts, including summary and detailed expenditures and available balances; counsels’ faculty on a variety of potential award problems and recommends solutions.
• Keeps abreast of changes involving internally and externally imposed policies and procedures and ensures that sponsored projects are administered in accordance with such policies.
• Serves as Grant Manager for a select portfolio of researchers, based on the needs of the Division and the specific researchers. This includes all tasks and requirements of a PMA Division Grant Manager.
• Responsible for the review and recommendation of approval of every proposal and high-risk cost transfer for the Division Chair. Upon response, ensures signed documents are returned or moved forward, or that any concerns are addressed prior to approval.
• Review and approve all procurement system requests in a timely manner for Procurement Card (P-Card) and Procurement System (TechMart) actions both as a Grant Manager and as the Sponsored Research Manager (forwarding, approving, rejecting, returning, etc.).
• Create transactions in the procurement system as needed or required, either as a Grant Manager (subawards) or as the Research Manager (secondments, invoices, etc.).
• Oversees spending on large/complex grants to ensure conformance to regulations specified by each granting agency; manages reconciliation and error correction on all expenditures.
• Monitors sponsored research funding, on an on-going basis and brings to the attention of the Division Operations Officer and/or Division Chair any funding or spending issues that require special attention. Monitors faculty discretionary gift and endowment account activity. Directs grant management staff in minimizing overspent accounts and identifies strategies to resolve overspent accounts.
• Makes recommendations to Division Operations Officer and Division Chair regarding changes in regulations that have a financial or regulatory impact on the Division and the Institute.
• Acts as a key technical expert on Institute financial systems and reporting tools; provides training and/or assistance to Division staff in use of financial reports and reporting tools.
• Establishes and maintains excellent working relationships with the Office of Sponsored Research, Project Accounting, Cost Studies, Financial Services, Office or Research Compliance and other Central Administrative offices.
• Supports special studies and surveys as needed.
• Provides special guidance and support for non-sponsored project related agreements and tasks, as required by the Division, such as Faculty Secondments.
• Serves on Institutional Committees and Task Forces; represents the Division on matters related Sponsored Research administration.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Minimum eight years of experience managing large, complex federal and non-federal sponsored research awards in an academic environment including pre- and post-award, reporting, reconciliation, problem resolution, documentation, and audit.
• Minimum five years supervisory experience including recruitment, hiring, staff evaluation, corrective action, staff training, and development.
• Advanced knowledge of NSF, NIH, DOD, DOE, NASA, STScI, and other federally sponsored award programs; knowledge of privately sponsored awards and gift and endowed funds.
• Experience in developing proposals and administering complex awards from non-federal sponsors (e.g., foundations, corporate sponsors, individual donors).
• Solid understanding of generally accepted accounting principles and financial transactions as applied to sponsored programs.
• Ability to gather, consolidate, analyze, interpret, and communicate information from many different sources utilizing automated financial systems, spreadsheets, and various databases.
• Strong analytical skills to assess situations, define problems, formulate solutions, make recommendations, and initiate corrective actions.
• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership, direction, and guidance to others; skill in working as part of a team and maintaining cooperative working relationships with administrators, faculty, staff, and peers.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills; proficiency in writing concise, logical, informative, and grammatically correct correspondence, reports, and other written material to explain complex problems, policies, and procedures.
• Excellent computer skills including experience with centralized institutional financial systems, expert level knowledge of Microsoft Office tools and database applications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Graduate degree strongly preferred.
• Experience providing financial support to large fabrication projects involving multiple collaborators.
• Working knowledge of Caltech and the many systems at Caltech, including Oracle Financials, Techmart, Compliance systems, OBI Data Warehouse, Taleo, Box, CardQuest,
• Financial Queries, PDC, RADR, SharePoint, Kronos and Zoom.

Required Documents

• Resume.
• Cover Letter.