Senior Contract Specialist

About the role

The Research Contract Specialist manages the administrative lifecycle, operational intake, preliminary review, tracking, and execution coordination for University research agreements. The role serves as an operational bridge among faculty researchers, institutional offices, and external sponsors while providing support and maintaining accurate, auditable contract records.

Responsibilities

• Serves as the central operational contact for incoming research contract actions, triages requests from faculty and departments, and coordinates routine status communications regarding active agreement workflows.
• Logs, classifies, and tracks agreement milestones in the institutional database; reviews intake packets for required compliance disclosures, budgets, scopes of work, internal approvals, and other routing requirements before formal review.
• Reviews and populates standard institutional templates for Non Disclosure Agreements, Material Transfer Agreements, Data Use Agreements, Sponsored Research Agreements, and related research contract documents; compares external drafts against University guidelines and identifies variances for escalation.
• Coordinates institutional signature routing, final execution steps, document management, and auditable electronic file maintenance consistent with University processes and records expectations.
• Collaborates with Pre Award, the Office of Grant and Contract Services, Principal Investigators, and departmental administrators to align agreement language with project budgets, scopes of work, and procedural milestones.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Business Administration, Public Administration, Legal Studies, Communications, or a related field, and three (3) years of professional experience within a public institution, state agency, local government, federal office, or similar environment handling contracts, regulatory compliance, or program coordination; or seven (7) years of an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in research administration, university contracting, public sector contract operations, sponsor communications, records management, enterprise database tracking, or paralegal work.
• Paralegal experience or certification is preferred but not required.

Skills

• Knowledge of public sector administrative processes, contract intake, workflow tracking, and records management.
• Ability to identify routine contract terms, nonstandard provisions, missing documentation, procedural gaps, and items requiring escalation.
• Strong professional writing, proofreading, organization, database management, and deadline management skills.
• Ability to communicate clearly with faculty, departmental administrators, institutional offices, and external sponsors.

Schedule

Monday through Friday; 8:00am through 5:00pm.

Benefits

Position is benefit eligible: Yes. We are proud to offer a comprehensive benefits package to our employees at the University. Benefits information.