Grants & Contracts Professional

About the Job

The G&C Professional is an intermediate-level researchadministrator who works one-on-one with faculty researchers tomanage the full life cycle of grant proposals from initial project inception through final institutional approval and submission. This position provides highly responsive, direct project managementsupport primarily for a standard portfolio of federal andnon-federal grant submissions. The G&C Prof 3 ensures thatindividual faculty proposals are structured accurately, meet allmilestones, and adhere strictly to compliance frameworks.

• End-to-End Proposal Management (Standard Portfolios) (45%):
  • Work one-on-one with School of Nursing (SoN) Principal Investigators (PIs) through the entire grant submission process from start to finish as well as grant reporting phases.
  • Build operational checklists, outline submission timelines, lead proposal preparation meetings, and cross-reference application materials against sponsor solicitation matrices to ensure submission readiness. Draft all non-science proposal components (e.g., facilities; other support; collaborator, consultant and administrative letters) for faculty review.
  • Ensure all documents are compliant with Sponsor requirements (e.g., verifying page limits, auditing font types, configuring SciENcv profiles, Other Support documents). Upload all proposal documents into sponsor systems.
• Sponsor Requests (5%):
  • Initiate and work with PIs to develop documents in response to Sponsor requests. Coordinate, route and submit pre-award Just in Time (JIT) and other requests through eRA Commons and the Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA).
• Budget Preparation & Calculation (20%):
  • Partner directly with PIs to prepare and calculate standard proposal budgets and baseline budget justifications and statements of work.
  • Ensure the accurate application of institutional base salaries, fringe benefit rates, and indirect cost rates (F&A) in total alignment with university policy and funder constraints.
  • Initiate internal setup paperwork for SPA, mapping budget line-items to UMN People Soft chart strings, and set up initial internal tracking systems.
  • Draft and manage subaward and no-cost extension budgets, including directly emailing external institutional coordinators, issuing subrecipient commitment packages, auditing external institutional rate agreements/fringe allocations, and ensuring external institutional sign-offs weeks in advance of the submission deadline.
• Post-Award Support (3%):
  • Provides baseline post-award financial support, including monitoring active grant budgets and spending compliance, assisting PIs with standard financial reporting requirements, and ensuring alignment with sponsor terms and University policies.
• Manage Data and Reporting (5%):
  • Prepare and route the proposal information in MN GEMS, enter information into ONRS and other databases and ensure institutional data are accurate, and run reports as needed.
  • Collaborative Relationship Building (10%):
    Cultivate and maintain strong, productive professional relationships with faculty researchers.
  • Actively learn their ongoing administrative preferences, keep them tightly informed of milestone internal deadlines, and offer seamless, personalized guidance throughout their submission pipeline.
  • Provide high-touch, solution-oriented service to all internal team members and external institutional partners.
• Research Training (2%):
  • Work with other Office of Nursing Research and Scholarship (ONRS) to design and lead training initiatives for research tools (e.g., SciENcv, My Bibliography) enabling investigators to efficiently manage their research profiles.
• Template Customization & Feedback (5%):
  • Utilize existing office templates, worksheets, and job aids to streamline the pre-award process for faculty.
  • Provide regular administrative feedback and input to senior staff to help continuously refine and improve these tools for accuracy and thoroughness.
• Operational Alignment & Development (5%):
  • Participate actively in weekly office team meetings to discuss current issues, dissect major policy updates, share regulatory compliance insights, coordinate staff workload balances, and cover for staff who are out of the office.
  • Maintain cutting-edge expertise by engaging in university courses, federal workshops, and national research administration webinars.

• BA/BS plus at least 4 years of experience, or a combination of related education and work experience to equal at least eight years.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Demonstrated extensive experience drafting and managing budgets for external and internal grant proposals and preparing budgets for SPA approval.
• Specific internal (e.g., UMN Grant-in-Aid) and external (e.g., NIH) grants & contracts knowledge as it relates to higher education.
• Ability to efficiently multi-task across proposal submissions to a variety of funders and deadlines.
• Experience with human subjects research as it pertains to grant proposal requirements.
• Experience…