Post-Award Specialist

Job Summary

This position will serve as a post-award specialist in the department, providing day-to-day management and oversight of a diverse portfolio of sponsored projects for faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. The role is responsible for ensuring accurate financial stewardship from award setup through closeout, including monitoring expenditures and cost share, reconciling project accounts, supporting payroll distribution and cost transfers as needed, and coordinating timely reporting and deliverables in accordance with sponsor terms and conditions as well as Department, School of Medicine, and University policies.

Key Responsibilities

Post Award & Finance

• Responsible for oversight and seeing assigned sponsored projects for the department through completion, including both federal and non-federal sponsored projects
• Ensure compliance with all applicable federal guidelines (including OMB Circular A-21 and OMB Uniform Guidance), sponsor-specific rules and restrictions (AHA, ACS, ADA, JDRF, etc.), state regulations and University fiscal policies.
• Schedule and participate in regular meetings with departmental faculty members, to provide and analyze funding forecasts and to discuss future business decisions/plans.
• Reconcile direct and indirect costs for all projects to ensure all appropriate expenditures have been posted to project speedtype before close-out process and to prevent any overages/deficits.
• Work with the Finance Office and Office of Grants & Contracts to process journal entries for projects
• ePERs monitoring; run the outstanding ePERs report for the department, contact faculty and staff to ensure compliance, perform PETs to correct as necessary and ensure accurate effort reporting on projects.
• Contact sponsors regarding all re-budgeting requests, carry-forward requests, special permission requests and guidelines/restriction clarifications.
• Efficiently maintain all subcontract activities for assigned faculty, including initiating subcontract setup process, interfacing between OGC and subcontract sites, performing monthly tracking of all contract and subcontract invoicing and payments for all sponsored projects and contracts.
• Reconcile Federal Financial Reports and Final Expenditure Reports to the general ledger prior to Office of Grants & Contracts submission to sponsor. Work with the OGC Post-Award manager to close out projects in a timely manner and prepare all reports for the close-out process.
• Monitor changes in University, state, and federal regulations and recommend updates to departmental post-award procedures to maintain compliance and improve efficiency.
• Support the Director of Finance & Administration in identifying and evaluating future funding needs (e.g., bridge funding scenarios) using projections and historical spending trends.

Payroll & Effort Management

• Monitor payroll funding distributions and salary charges monthly for sponsored and departmental accounts; adjust funding, compensation, and job codes as needed to align with awarded budgets and effort commitments.
• Coordinate with the Pre-Award team on personnel effort reporting to ensure submissions are accurate, timely, and compliant with sponsor requirements.
• Process payroll expense transfers (PETs) and funding distribution updates for assigned speed-types to address revised budgets, late awards, overages/surpluses, and payroll-related adjustments needed for FFRs.