Senior Director, Post Award Finance

• Job Type: Officer of Administration
• Bargaining Unit:
• Regular/Temporary: Regular
• End Date if Temporary:
• Hours Per Week: 35
• Standard Work Schedule:
• Building: Jerome L. Greene Science Center
• Salary Range: $175,000 - $200,000

Position Summary

Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute unites world-class scientists across diverse academic disciplines to conduct groundbreaking research that transforms our understanding of the brain and its influence on the mind and behavior.

As a leading neuroscience institute, our mission is to decipher the mind and brain to better understand behavior. Our researchers are committed to foundational science, uncovering the principles that shape how the brain develops, functions, and recovers.

With more than 50 labs, the Zuckerman Institute serves as a hub for collaboration, bringing together Columbia's top scholars to drive research in bold new directions. Located in Manhattanville, our state-of-the-art Jerome L. Greene Science Center provides an inspiring home for discovery in one of the world's most dynamic cities.

Reporting to the Executive Director of Finance, the Senior Director assists faculty Principal Investigators and their administrators with financial components of managing grants and other funding in each investigator's portfolio. This role works with ZI Development, Team Science, and the Executive Director, Research Development to pursue private corporate and foundation funding opportunities, targeting appropriate Principal Investigators.

As an expert in post-award research administration, the Senior Director will play a key role in driving the growth of the service by expanding the number of investigators supported, ensuring an outstanding quality of service, utilizing best practices to ensure compliance and ongoing transparency in the financial management of sponsored projects, other awarded extramural funds, and departmental/unrestricted projects.

The Senior Director works in partnership with the Executive Director of Pre-Award & Research Development to provide a comprehensive and cohesive management structure of the entire grant lifecycle of awards at the Institute, providing a holistic service to the Institute's PIs by ensuring all related administrative, financial, and operational processes are streamlined. The Senior Director provides ZI leadership forward-looking funding reports that facilitate strategic, proactive planning of grant submissions enabling continuity of funding. The Senior Director will be charged with driving the growth of the service by ensuring an outstanding quality of service, strategic portfolio diversification planning, and enhanced support that targets labs in need of funding. More broadly, the Senior Director will also develop a "grants management" training program for appropriate Institute lab investigators and staff that frequently liaise with research administration.

Responsibilities

• Oversee disbursement of a suite of reports that will be prepared and distributed on a monthly basis to assist Principal Investigators (PIs) and their administrators in the review and management of faculty members' individual funding portfolios, which may consist of grant, contract, gift, endowment, and other types of restricted and unrestricted funding. Identify and pursue opportunities to refine and optimize existing reports, including championing and guiding future automation efforts.
• Provide mentorship and support the ongoing development of team members, and, personnel to ensure a high performing and collaborative team who support the labs including lab managers.
• Possess detailed familiarity with policies and best practices for managing federal and non-federal grants in a university context and applies that knowledge as the in-house expert on grants management. Maintain familiarity with evolving regulatory and compliance context.
• Establish and ensure ongoing application of processes and best practices for all services provided by the team.
• Operationalize and streamline information sharing ensuring a seamless experience for PIs in grant lifecycle in coordination with Executive Director, Research Development
• Work closely with stakeholders to pursue targeted and large-scale, complex awards.
• Develops and implements training and guidance for investigators and lab managers with delegated financial responsibilities in the lab.
• Advises on strategic grant portfolio diversification at the lab level as well as monitoring and reporting to leadership on grant portfolio at an Institute level.
• Represent the Post Award Finance throughout the organization, interacting directly with faculty, lab managers, senior leadership, leaders of central financial and sponsored projects offices, and others. Maintain positive relationships with clients, discuss service options with prospective clients, and address escalated issues and concerns, especially complex matters related to large, multi-PI grants.
• Manages financial operations, including use of grant and non-grant funding. Monitors expenses, tracks balances, conducts variance analysis, and projects burn rate and future utilization. Manages subcontract finance.
• Oversees all grants management activities, such as financial monitoring, reporting, and salary assignments, and ensures completion of regular financial attestations and other reports. Ensures federal grant reports, invoicing, and reimbursements are processed accurately and in a timely manner; confirms all grants and contracts are closed out appropriately.
• Identifies, troubleshoots, and resolves complex grants administrative issues; keeps the Executive Director of Finance apprised of issues and escalates as appropriate.
• Oversee effort reporting and provide support for periodic reviews or audits of documentation. Provide input on ongoing efforts throughout the institution to improve reporting and access to financial information about sponsored projects and similar funds.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required, plus at least seven (7) to nine (9) years of direct related experience.
• Must possess advanced Excel skills, including familiarity with creation and use of complex pivot tables, lookup functions, and other features for formatting, manipulating, and analyzing data.
• Experience with financial principles and processes related to award management in academic research or similar environment.
• Comprehensive knowledge of sponsored project lifecycle; strong working knowledge of pre-award process; detailed familiarity with post-award financial management and compliance activities.
• Outstanding diplomatic and communications skills; ability to build collaborations and gain buy-in from clients and other partners within an organization. Must be able to communicate clearly and accurately directly with senior principal investigators. Must be able to communicate effectively on a technical level with operations personnel in central offices.
• Exceptional judgment in matters of financial management, compliance, communications, and priority-setting; demonstrated ability to produce accurate results and meet deadlines.
• Demonstrated ability to prepare reports on complex financial information and present them clearly to others.
• Must possess familiarity with relevant federal regulations as well as typical institutional requirements and best practices for sponsored project management.
• Supervisory experience that includes hands-on familiarity with personnel policy and practice; ability to mentor management-level team members.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in a relevant discipline plus five years of related experience, or Bachelor's degree plus at least seven years of experience.
• Experience with managing or leading grants and contracts administration in a university or academic healthcare/basic science research setting.
• General familiarity with data warehouse reporting principles, financial database structure, and/or SQL queries.

Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran

Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.