Director of Strategy & Partnerships
Director of Strategy and Partnerships
The Director of Strategy and Partnerships is a senior leadership team role, reporting to LASP’s Director, that develops and executes LASP's strategic vision, cultivates the partnerships essential to advancing the lab's space science mission, and ensures competitive proposals are submitted for winning new grants and contracts that support the laboratory’s science and technology efforts. In collaboration with the Director of LASP and the executive team, this role represents LASP objectives, champions strategic positions for large missions and instrument lines, leads capture efforts, and oversees proposal activities across key partner relationships.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy
- Working with the LASP Director and senior leadership, oversee the development of short- and long-term strategic priorities and future plans that span LASP’s science and technology teams, including in coordination with CU, government, private, and international space partners.
- Identify new opportunities across academic, government, commercial, and international sectors, including awareness of emerging domains, products, and sectors eligible for expansion, such as large mission concepts, instrument line development, and strategic faculty and staff hiring
Partnerships
- Cultivate partnerships with NASA, NOAA, local and state government, federal agency, industry, foundation, and philanthropic entities, supported by a robust partner relationship management system.
Proposal & Capture
- Interact with prospective principal investigators (PIs) to maintain a continual awareness of future ambitions
- Evaluate proposal opportunities and assess resource and capacity requirements for responding to calls, working closely with LASP leadership
- Publicize upcoming proposal opportunities within LASP
- Lead a team of proposal and capture managers to grow the quality and number of proposals submitted by LASP principal investigators and by external principal investigators partnered with LASP scientists and technologists
- Oversee the submission of large mission, instrument, and research proposals, including conducting internal reviews to ensure proposal excellence
- Oversee the LASP Strategy and Partnerships Committee, a rotating group of scientists and technologists to support the Director of Strategy & Partnerships in shared responsibility for lab-wide dissemination of opportunities, internal proposal support and review, and fostering the skills growth of new PIs and PMs.
- Ensure initiatives for strategy and partnerships are resourced, sequenced, and tracked to completion.
Plus other duties as assigned.
Qualifications
Minimum:
- Advanced degree or equivalent experience in a relevant discipline of engineering or science.
- Ability to lead and define new directions in science, engineering, and mission opportunities
- Program/project management experience in a research or science mission capacity
- Demonstrated ability to manage complex organizational relationships and drive alignment across diverse teams without direct authority
- Knowledge of government, commercial, philanthropic, and international space research goals, objectives, and opportunities
- Deep familiarity with federal proposal and procurement processes, including experience with NASA, NOAA, NSF, DoD, or comparable agencies.
- Ability to identify academic, financial, and political factors that impact research and mission opportunities
- Ability to assess and manage business, social, and cultural factors affecting strategy and partnerships with local, national, and international organizations
- Excellent collaborative and adaptive thinking perspectives, along with high emotional intelligence
- Excellent cross-cultural and multi-discipline communication skills
- Resilience and composure under pressure, with the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-moving environment.
- Creativity, accountability, and resilience
Preferred
- Ph.D. degree in a relevant discipline of engineering or science
- Experience with industry, federal, and/or international space agencies
- Commercial business development and marketing experience
- Eligibility for a high-level security clearance
Due to requirements governing access to export-controlled data and information, only U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (green card holders), or other protected individuals (i.e., persons designated as an asylee, refugee, or temporary resident under amnesty provisions) are eligible for hire.
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