Introduction:
Aga Khan University, chartered in 1983 as Pakistan’s first private international University, is committed to the provision of education, research, and health care based on international standards relevant to Pakistan and the region. The affiliated Aga Khan University Hospital provides state-of-the-art clinical facilities and well-equipped diagnostic services. The University currently has teaching sites in Pakistan, East Africa, the United Kingdom, and Afghanistan and is a major component of the Aga Khan Development Network.
AKU is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to safeguarding and aims to adopt appropriate standards for ensuring and promoting a respectful relationship with and between all faculty, staff, trainees, volunteers, beneficiaries, wider communities, and other stakeholders with whom it works, including children and vulnerable adults and expects all employees/trainees and partners to share this commitment.
Responsibilities:
This position is for a highly motivated people and process manager who has strong operational & grant management skills and competencies to run a large grant portfolio. This job entails strong team building and strategizing the research administration function across 15+ departments at AKU. Will require a go-getter attitude to get this done without comprising the institutional and funding agencies’ rules and regulations. Will require to develop people within the team for their professional growth. Must have strong grants, business, financial, general management, strategic management, team development skills with a positive attitude and resilience to sustain work pressure. In this position, you will be responsible for:
- supporting Post Award Manager in team’s activities.
- ensuring that grant milestones are input into the system and deadlines are tracked.
- proactively working with grant administrators and support units to identify upcoming milestones and ensure that deadlines are met and, where necessary, extension are requested.
- ensuring timely internal approvals for all post-award documentation, including cost extensions, no cost extensions and project close outs.
- monitoring productivity in Post Award operations, for example milestone, purchases, payments and hiring.
- monitoring and validating the close out documentation provided by grant administrators
- ensuring smooth transition from award to post-award.
- working with Grants and Contracts team in Finance to understand the budget requirements and track the expenditure, highlighting under and overspends, and request explanations as necessary.
- monitoring grants variance report (GVR), discuss with PI about corrective and preventive measures with respect to utilization of grants
- monitoring residual grants balances and work with Grants and Contracts team in Finance to resolve.
- proactively liaising with internal and external stakeholders.
- monitoring the delivery of financial reporting milestones.
- engaging with a broad group of stakeholders, including Finance, HR, Compliance, and the Office of Research & Graduate studies to streamline overall post-award process, policies, and handoffs to ensure problems are resolved and there is shared learning for continuous improvement.
- facilitating the resolution of issues, working with the teams involved, including external stakeholders
- ensuring changes to grant activity are properly documented.
- developing tools and templates that create efficiency and standardization, ultimately leading to high-quality, predictable outcomes.
- conducting training and awareness for grant administrators and field offices, including regular updates
- liaising with Research Office and Compliance to ensure any central requirements are captured in training material.
- providing regular reports and commentary of the post award activity.
- performing regular analysis on backlog of grant contracts across the FHS portfolio of projects.
Requirements:
The incumbent should have:
- a Master’s in Business Administration (additional qualification would be an added advantage) from a reputable national or international university.
- professional qualification in Finance, Law or Project Management, and/or international certification (if any) would be an advantage.
- 3-5 years of professional experience in Business Management, Operations, and/or Research and Grants Management in Pakistan or abroad.
- knowledge of grants and projects’ implementation cycles
- excellent organizational skills (ability to organize things effectively) and effectively multi-task
- ability to manage time and prioritize tasks effectively with a focus on the organization’s strategic research themes.
- ability to design and conduct Capacity Building initiatives for field site employees
- contributing Team Player behaviour and a proven, effective leader
- excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to collaborate across research departments and support units to achieve common objectives and finding solutions to problems
- resilience and ability to cope with work pressure & stringent deadlines
- ability to travel across Pakistan and work with remote research sites in problem resolution
- excellent Computing and Report Writing Skills
Comprehensive reference checks will be conducted.
