Research Accounting Manager, Office of Research Administration

Colorado School of Mines•Colorado, CO

2d•$86,000 - $96,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Office of Finance, Administration and Operations (FA&O) at the Colorado School of Mines provides critical support to the university's mission and strategic initiatives. The Office of Research Administration, within FA&O, is responsible for ensuring financial compliance and streamlined business processes for the campus research community. The Research Accounting Manager reports directly to the Associate Director of Research Administration - Accounting and provides leadership to the university’s Research Accounting team. This role involves representing the Office of Research Administration in various activities, collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, and applying regulatory interpretation to sponsored activity. The position requires critical thinking, independent financial data analysis, and effective communication of regulatory and financial information. The Research Accounting Manager will manage a team of five direct reports, overseeing award setup, expense monitoring, financial reporting, financial closeout, and post-award financial analysis for sponsored awards. The ideal candidate possesses a can-do attitude, enjoys working with diverse stakeholder groups, and collaborates to resolve challenges.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, business administration or related field.
7+ years of accounting experience
2+ years of supervisory experience or demonstration of lead role in lieu of experience
Working knowledge of federal and other pertinent external research regulations.
Strong data analytical skills using tools such as spreadsheets, databases, presentation software, and enterprise financial systems
Demonstrated customer service skills, the ability to work effectively with a wide range of constituencies in a diverse community and ability to meet multiple deadlines
Analyzation and problem-solving skills including the ability to use independent judgment
Excellent communication skills
Experience presenting detailed financial information in a consumable format to broad audiences.
Candidates must be currently authorized to work in the United States.

Nice To Haves

Higher education, and/or government accounting experience
Masters Degree in Accounting and/or Business Administration
Uniform Guidance knowledge
GASB knowledge and experience

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain a highly skilled and engaged team through managing the organizational structure, roles, and responsibilities of the Research Accounting Team.
Develop and maintain an inclusive and respectful work environment with a team capable of working through new challenges, responsive to ad hoc requests, able to meet important deadlines, and is highly accountable for accuracy in their work product.
Ensure high quality, elite customer advising services to the campus community and implement service metrics and feedback reporting.
Ensure performance plans include role-based professional development goals to drive exceptional quality work products.
Develop performance-based metrics and ensure robust feedback loops between manager and employees are regularly utilized and documented.
Foster a culture of professional development and continuous improvement within the staff. Shift the department’s perception from a "bottleneck" to a "solution provider" by streamlining support and user-facing resources.
Ensure the development and maintenance of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for all research accounting functions.
Lead staff training on policies & procedural changes that impact Sponsored Awards.
Provide direct supervision to the Research Accountant unit. Formal supervision includes providing documentation to support recommended corrective and disciplinary actions, second level signature on performance plans and appraisals, and resolving informal grievances.
Manage the hiring process for Research Accountants, which includes maintaining job descriptions, interviewing applicants, and recommending hire, promotion, or transfer.
Review of award setups for completeness and accuracy. Develop and maintain control reports to review setups performed by the Research Accountants to ensure the correctness of setups within ORA. Work with assigned Research Accountants to resolve any setup issues.
Create new research accounts and amend existing accounts in the School’s financial system and ORA’s enterprise project tracking system. Utilize information obtained from the legal agreement, proposal documents and other project related documents. Decides appropriate financial codes to input into the School’s financial system to accurately administer and monitor awards in accordance with federal regulations, sponsor terms and conditions, and School policy.
Recognize gap and develop, improve best practices and standard operating procedure as new policies, terms, clause arise to better perform award setup.
Provide award setup training to new and existing Research Accountants.
Review and approve cost transfers, salary redistributions and other accounting entries performed by the Post Award team at ORA. Monitor, review and reconcile award budgets, balances and expenses. This includes deficit monitoring and expense review both pre-expenditure and post-expenditure.
Work with the other ORA staff (i.e. Contract Administrators) to review deficit spending requests (currently, At-Risk Spending Requests) to determine if the financial risk to the School is acceptable under current policy and practices.
Identify, investigate and resolve discrepancies or errors found within research accounts. Resolution will require coordination with the applicable faculty members, ORA staff members, other departments and/or project sponsor, as applicable.
Approve faculty requests for no-cost time extensions, budget deviations, and pre-award spending.
Assist the Property Manager in the Controller’s Office to ensure all equipment is titled, accounted and tagged properly within School systems and per regulations.
Develop and/or update ad-hoc reports using data from Workday, Tableau or other database applications for tracking, diagnostic and financial analysis of sponsored activity. Develop templates to improve and expedite financial administration of awards (i.e., tuition proportionate to salary calculation, re-budgeting, closeout workbook, etc.)
Recognize gaps and develop, improve effective business practices, standing operating procedures as it relates to award financial monitoring.
Serve as subject expert on the financial monitoring of awards and provide training to staff on their applications.
Generate and Analyze ad-hoc financial reporting to leadership (award expenditure volume, subrecipient volume, sponsor type volume, etc) and make recommendation on work assignments.
Perform quality control reports to identify financial errors and resolve errors.
Develop and Manage Quality Control reports to ensure final sponsor reports are complete, work with the research accountants to ensure Sponsor final report correctness and timeliness.
Ensure the research accounting team prepares and accurately submits required financial reports within sponsoring agency timeframes. This position will analyze the financial statements, supporting documentation and other necessary information for each research account to ensure accurate financial reports are submitted.
Ensure the research accounting team prepares and accurately submits required non-financial reports within sponsoring agency timeframes. This includes Property Reports, Patent Reports, Cost Share reports, etc.
Utilize School systems, such as Workday, Tableau and ORA’s project software, to extract data needed for required reporting. Successfully navigate sponsor reporting systems to submit required reports.
Serve as subject expert on financial and non-financial reporting and provide training to staff.
Recognize operational gaps and develop, improve effective business practices, standing operating procedures as it relates to award reporting.
Develop and maintain quality control reports to identify outstanding and upcoming sponsor reports due.
Ensures research accounting team performs all closeout actions required by sponsoring agency and School policy and procedures, including, but not limited to: Maintain a detailed tracking of closeout activities, Track all outstanding accounts receivable actions to successfully coordinate the process of financial closeout between the grant sub-ledger and the school’s General Ledger, Perform final expense review and account reconciliation.
Serve as subject expert of award closeout and provide training to staff.
Recognize operational gaps and develop, improve standing operating procedures as it relates to Award closeouts.
Perform managerial review of all award closeouts.

Benefits

Flexible health and dental care options
Generous sick/vacation time: 13 paid holidays per year – including a week-long winter break for entire campus.
Fully vested retirement plan on first day of employment, with generous employer contribution
Tuition benefits (6 credits per year for employees, 50 percent discount for dependents)
Free RTD Ecopass
Discount programs through the State of Colorado
Free tickets for Mines Athletics home games
Access to the state of the art Recreation Center (fitness classes and training, swimming pool and more)
Equipment rentals through the Outdoor Rec Center
On campus daycare center