Grants Manager

Core Responsibilities

• Lead the planning, execution, monitoring, and closeout of competitive grant and merit-review activities.
• Develop and manage review schedules, reviewer assignments, deliverables, quality controls, risks, and contingency plans.
• Interpret funding announcements, application requirements, evaluation criteria, and scoring rubrics and translate requirements into clear reviewer guidance.
• Recruit, vet, assign, onboard, and coordinate qualified reviewers and subject-matter experts.
• Facilitate reviewer training, calibration sessions, office hours, and other activities to promote consistent application of evaluation criteria.
• Manage technical, administrative, and formal merit reviews and monitor reviewer progress, workloads, completion rates, and deadlines.
• Manage conflict-of-interest, confidentiality, and reviewer-independence requirements and coordinate application reassignment when necessary.
• Review scores and narrative comments for completeness, consistency, evidence sufficiency, and compliance with established review procedures.
• Cook up the validation, reconciliation, ranking, and reporting of application-review results and ensure accurate entry into designated grants management systems.
• Prepare review-status reports, management updates, scoring reports, dashboards, and final competition documentation.
• Conduct portfolio-level analysis to identify scoring trends, application strengths and weaknesses, risks, and other decision-support insights.
• Facilitate project meetings, progress briefings, issue resolution, debriefings, and knowledge-transfer activities.
• Maintain accurate, secure, confidential, and audit-ready grant-review records.
• Perform other grant-review, program-evaluation, and project-management duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• A Master's degree in Public Administration, Public Policy, Economics, Business Administration, Finance, Program Evaluation, Research, Data Analytics, Social Science, or a related field.
• Seven (7)+ years of progressively responsible experience in grants management, grant program operations, program evaluation, application review, research administration, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience supporting or managing competitive grant reviews.
• Demonstrated experience supporting, conducting, or managing formal merit reviews.
• Experience managing reviewer recruitment, assignments, training, conflicts of interest, application tracking, scoring, quality assurance, and reporting.
• Experience evaluating applications against established funding requirements, evaluation criteria, and scoring rubrics.
• Experience coordinating reviewers, subject-matter experts, analysts, or review panels in deadline-driven environments.
• Strong knowledge of competitive grantmaking practices, confidentiality requirements, reviewer independence, and defensible decision documentation.
• Strong analytical and quality-assurance skills, including experience validating quantitative and qualitative data and identifying scoring or documentation inconsistencies.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Office and virtual collaboration/project-management tools.
• Experience working with electronic grants management, application review, workflow, or similar systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, organization, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to exercise sound judgment, impartiality, discretion, and professionalism when handling sensitive or proprietary information.
• Ability to work effectively and independently in a remote environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting federal or state competitive grant programs.
• Experience evaluating grants related to economic development, entrepreneurship, innovation, workforce development, technology commercialization, or related areas.
• Experience leading multi-reviewer panels, reviewer calibration, portfolio analysis, or score normalization.
• Experience with Salesforce or comparable grants management platforms.
• Familiarity with artificial intelligence, AI workforce development, responsible AI, technology commercialization, or related emerging technologies.
• PMP, Certified Grants Management Specialist (CGMS), or comparable professional certification.