Grant Writing Support Specialist

Job Purpose:

The Grant Writing Support Specialist plays a critical role in strengthening the University’s research capacity by providing high-level grant development support to faculty across disciplines. This position partners with faculty to identify funding opportunities, refine research narratives, and prepare competitive proposals to national and international sponsors. The Specialist contributes directly to faculty success by offering individualized consultations, proposal editing, and strategic guidance, as well as coordinating resources and workshops that enhance faculty competitiveness in securing external research funding.

Key Responsibilities:

Faculty Proposal Development and Advisory Support

• Provide targeted support to faculty preparing major research, training, or center grant proposals, ensuring alignment with sponsor priorities and institutional positioning.
• Meet with faculty to review and strengthen proposal drafts, offering detailed feedback on clarity, persuasiveness, structure, and scholarly presentation.
• Provide substantive and technical editing and proofreading to ensure proposals meet high standards of academic communication.
• Support faculty in budget development and coordinate timelines, submission logistics, and required documentation for complex proposals.

Strategic Grant Planning and Institutional Alignment

• Work with faculty and academic leadership to align proposal development with the University’s research strengths and long-term funding objectives.
• Collaborate with department chairs, deans, research center directors, and institutional leadership to identify priority funding areas and coordinate institutional submissions.
• Provide leadership with insights on faculty funding activity, trends, and strategic opportunities to inform research growth initiatives.

Capacity Building and Faculty Development

• Design and deliver workshops, training programs, peer review sessions, and mock study sections to strengthen faculty grant-writing skills and proposal leadership.
• Introduce new faculty to grant resources and support services as part of onboarding and mentoring programs.
• Maintain a repository of templates, boilerplate language, and examples of successful proposals to support faculty development.

Funding Landscape Monitoring and Collaboration Support

• Monitor trends in external funding agencies and proactively share relevant opportunities aligned with faculty research agendas.
• Support interdisciplinary and multi-institutional grant applications that advance cross-cutting research initiatives.

Quality Assurance, Compliance, and Reporting

• Ensure proposals are coherent, persuasive, and fully responsive to sponsor guidelines while maintaining institutional compliance requirements.
• Work closely with Sponsored Programs, Legal, and Finance offices to ensure administrative and regulatory compliance.
• Collect and analyze data on proposal submissions, success rates, and development needs; prepare reports to inform institutional research strategy and continuous improvement efforts.

Other Duties

• Perform all other duties as reasonably directed by the line manager that are commensurate with these functional objectives.

Academic Qualification:

• Master’s degree with research component in an AI related or similar discipline.
• PhD or equivalent research experience in a relevant field strongly preferred.

Professional Experience:

Essential

• Minimum of five (5) years of progressive experience in grant writing, research development, sponsored programs, or academic administration within a higher education or research-intensive environment.
• Demonstrated success in developing competitive proposals for major national and international funding agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH, ERC, Horizon Europe, DARPA, DFG or equivalent).
• Proven experience supporting or securing externally funded research from industry partners, major technology companies, private sector entities, or foundations.
• Exceptional writing, editing, and communication skills tailored to academic and research audiences.
• Strong understanding of funding agency cultures, review criteria, proposal development strategies, and sponsor expectations.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple complex proposals simultaneously and deliver high-quality outputs under strict deadlines.
• Collaborative and faculty-centric approach, with the ability to build trusted relationships with academic stakeholders.

Preferred

• Familiarity with research compliance frameworks, including IRB processes, export controls, data management plans, and sponsor regulatory requirements.
• Experience working in interdisciplinary or multi-institutional research environments.
• Ability to work flexibly during peak proposal submission periods to meet institutional and sponsor deadlines.