Post-Awards Grants Manager

About the role

Post-Award Grant Manager provides high-level leadership and operational oversight for post-award research administration across multiple departments and research centers in the College of Arts and Sciences. Serves as the strategic financial partner and compliance lead for a defined portfolio of faculty, managing the full lifecycle of externally funded research projects, overseeing approximately $5 million in active sponsored funding.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic financial management of all active sponsored awards within the assigned portfolio in the College of Arts and Sciences.
• Allocate salaries in HCM and coordinate time entry for non-exempt staff in compliance with the grant award.
• Monitor accounts monthly to reconcile expenditures, verify allowability, and ensure alignment with sponsor budgets.
• Provide monthly burn rate reports, variance analysis, and financial projections to faculty.
• Identify budget risks, communicate proactively with stakeholders, and implement corrective actions in collaboration with departments and principal investigators.
• Ensure accurate principal investigator effort allocations and salary distributions across faculty, staff, and student roles.
• Manage an active award portfolio representing 30 to 50 sponsored projects per manager, often with multiple funding sources, subawards, and project changes requiring ongoing oversight and adaptation to evolving sponsor requirements.
• Serve as the compliance lead for all post-award activity within the assigned portfolio; coordinate and complete effort certification for College of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff; ensure timely, accurate submission per institutional and federal policy.
• Review and approve expenditures, including high-value purchases, for allowability and proper justification.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation to support internal and external audits.
• Lead post-award subrecipient monitoring efforts; review and approve subrecipient invoices, confirm deliverables, and monitor financial risk; coordinate with PIs and pre-award colleagues to manage subaward modifications and documentation; ensure timely submission of closeout materials and verify final deliverables and payments; support vendor compliance and purchasing workflows as they relate to sponsor restrictions and audit readiness; act as a key liaison for cross-institutional collaborations to ensure consistency in subrecipient oversight practices.
• Direct the financial closeout of projects, including final reconciliations, residual balances, and submission of financial reports; confirm that all sponsor and institutional requirements are met prior to account termination; identify and manage post-award changes such as no-cost extensions, carryover, and rebudgeting requests; provide change requirements and supporting documentation to pre-award for sponsor routing and submission; maintain visibility on award timelines to ensure changes are addressed proactively; own and drive the full post-award lifecycle for all funded projects, beginning with assisting departments with award setup information and continuing through closeout, including all required sponsor communications and financial deliverables.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to faculty, providing one-on-one onboarding for newly funded awards and guiding investigators through post-award requirements; lead or co-lead faculty kickoff meetings with pre-award colleagues to ensure shared understanding of award terms, budget structures, subaward management, reporting requirements, and compliance obligations; deliver high-quality customer service and support faculty through the administrative aspects of their research; provide faculty with long-term financial planning support, including forecasting tools,