Neonatal Team Manager

CommonSpirit Health • Austin, TX

22h • Onsite

About The Position

The Neonatal Team Manager leads and oversees the strategic direction, growth, and daily operations of APA!’s Neonatal Nursery Program, with a focus on neonatal animals. This role ensures alignment with APA!’s broader mission to increase the live release rate across Texas, while building a sustainable, inclusive, and high-impact model for neonatal lifesaving.

The Neonatal Team Manager is responsible for managing daily workflows, supervising staff, and setting clear, mission-aligned goals. This includes creating structured plans, tracking progress toward outcomes, and ensuring accountability and follow-through on team priorities. The role uses data to guide decisions and helps keep the team focused on consistent, measurable impact. This is a leadership role rooted in empowerment, facilitation, and values-driven oversight.

Rather than working independently, the Neonatal Team Manager sets the tone that APA! is a volunteer-powered organization—every staff member is expected to work collaboratively with volunteers and to help create meaningful opportunities for them to lead and contribute. This includes pairing with volunteers to complete day-to-day tasks, modeling strong partnership, and developing a culture of shared effort and team accountability.

This position requires a high level of responsiveness and Manager on Duty availability. The work is often fast-paced and dynamic, with weekend or shift flexibility expected. While APA! strongly encourages work-life balance, during on-duty shifts, the Neonatal Team Manager is expected to be highly present, solutions-oriented, and ready to support the team with real-time problem-solving.

Every individual at APA! is responsible for working in collaboration with volunteers; making sure volunteers are recruited, trained and feel impactful through their efforts at APA!. A core part of this role is creating a welcoming and empowering experience for volunteers, including assisting with onboarding, training, and volunteer engagement as part of the day-to-day workflow.

Requirements

• Committed to embodying APA!’s Core Values: Innovation, Respect, Drive, Resourcefulness, and Inclusion and cultural values: Humble, Hungry, Smart
• Commitment to APA!'s customer experience expectations
• Passion for working well with staff, volunteers, and customers—helping all individuals feel successful, appreciated, and connected to APA!’s mission
• Strong commitment to volunteer engagement and support; dedicated to working well with volunteers across all roles
• Comfortable working cross-functionally and serving as a liaison between volunteers, customers, and team members
• Effective written and verbal communication skills; able to interpret rules, procedures, and instructional materials
• Self-starter with strong time management; able to work independently and collaboratively
• Excellent interpersonal skills; maintains a calm and professional presence in all situations
• Strong attention to detail and high standards for quality
• Adaptable to change and able to perform related duties as needed
• Dedicated to delivering an exceptional and inclusive customer experience

Responsibilities

• Foster and model a volunteer-powered culture across the team by ensuring that every staff member is partnered with volunteers on every shift, with the goal of empowering volunteers to lead and grow within the program.
• Serve as a facilitator and coach to staff and volunteers, ensuring the work is shared, not siloed, and that volunteers are supported in completing daily tasks.
• Ensure active recruitment, onboarding, and engagement of volunteers using volunteer engagement tools and resources
• Support retention by matching volunteers to appropriate tasks, offering guidance, and providing regular check-ins and staff mentorship.
• Identify strong volunteers for deeper roles and seek out customer to volunteer conversion opportunities.
• Recognize volunteer contributions through consistent appreciation and shoutouts.
• Provide clear expectations, hands-on training, and in-the-moment coaching to set volunteers up for success.
• Provide team leadership, training, and support to all members of the Neonatal Program team, including medical staff, placement staff, and volunteers, as assigned.
• Supervise daily duties for all Neonatal Program staff; create and manage working schedules.
• Administer check-ins, performance reviews, performance improvement discussions, and disciplinary actions for team members, with the Senior Manager.
• Work with APAtec to implement and support initiatives to continuously enhance knowledge and skills across the team.
• Model exemplary behavior for staff, especially regarding patient care, attendance, professionalism, and customer service.
• Support the Senior Manager with the development and updates of policies, procedures, and protocols; manage job descriptions and the program’s document inventory.
• Provide hands-on medical treatments as required to all kittens, pregnant and nursing cats in the program — whether in the Nursery, Panleukopenia Ward, or in Foster.
• Oversee and perform intake exams on kittens and nursing/pregnant cats, including blood draws for FeLV tests.
• Administer oral, topical, and subcutaneous medications and vaccines, as well as nebulizer treatments.
• Assess illness and oversee the prescription and filling of proper medications per established protocol; complete corresponding medical charts and paperwork.
• Oversee ringworm treatment using lime dip; decontaminate rooms, crates, carriers, and supplies.
• Assist in feeding nursery kittens, including tube feeding when needed; maintain nursery cleanliness and efficient operation.
• Track efficacy of medical protocols and kitten mortality, as needed.
• Oversee recruitment, management, training, and recognition of neonatal foster caregivers to ensure adherence to all APA! policies, procedures, and protocols.
• Achieve a 1:2 volunteer to staff engagement target through strategic recruitment initiatives, robust retention programs, and comprehensive training development.
• Develop and maintain foster caregiver training materials, resources, and communication channels across staff, volunteers, and foster caregivers.
• Lead and participate in orientations, presentations, committees, manager meetings, all-staff meetings, and town halls related to foster programs.
• Create strategies and benchmarks to reduce the length of stay for animals awaiting a foster placement, tracking key performance indicators to maximize program capacity.
• Handle customer service issues and incidents related to foster animals and transfer partners; maintain an onsite presence to support foster placement experiences.
• Collaborate with the Cat Team to create toolkits for fosters, adopters, and partner shelters.
• Support Senior Manager in the intake process of bringing kittens from partner shelters.
• Implement a standard case management/mentor schedule from the point of foster through to graduation to Cat Program.
• Support the Cat Team in developing a streamlined foster to cat team graduation plan – creating a handoff system, and informing 100% of foster on the options for graduation. Working with Cat Team to develop the process of promoting foster to family, and setting expectations for placement options (either finding adopters, foster to family, or choosing to adopt.)
• Create a system for foster retention that allows people to sign up for their next litter at the time of drop off when kittens graduate from neonatal foster care to cat team.
• Update shelterluv procedures so that information on neonatal kittens is kept up to date in our records.

Benefits

• Austin Pets Alive! is proud to offer a competitive benefits package for full-time employees, including subsidized employer-sponsored medical coverage, subsidized and voluntary life insurance, voluntary dental, vision and short-term disability options, all effective the first day of employment.
• We also offer voluntary wellness and emergency sick plans, up to 2% match on 401(K) retirement plan, supplemental benefits, flexible spending accounts and additional life coverage.
• Full-time employees receive 10 paid holidays and accrue 10 days paid time off during the first year of employment, with an additional 5 days of PTO accrual upon completion of 12 months of employment.
• Employees will also receive professional development opportunities through APA!’s ongoing mission to advance our animal welfare professionals in our life saving work.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed