Senior Director Research Operations R33457

Baystate Health - Springfield, MA

Full-time - Senior

Springfield, MA

Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional, and Similar Organizations

About the position

The Senior Director of Research Operations is responsible for assuring research strategies and operations align with and contribute to the Baystate Health mission, vision and system level initiatives. This position is responsible for ensuring the research infrastructure and operations meet the needs of faculty and leadership, while achieving programmatic goals. The Senior Director is accountable for managing expenses to budget, maintaining customer service satisfaction, measuring operational performance, supporting quality improvement activities and reporting performance metrics to senior leadership. Responsibilities include ensuring all sponsored awards conducted at Baystate Health is in compliance with federal, state, and local regulations and institutional policies. Serves as the liaison between research investigators, stakeholders, and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Collaborates with the medical Director or Research and the Chief Academic officer to strategically align research operations with the Baystate Health's mission and goals.
• Utilizes skills to contribute to Office of Research strategic planning, ensuring the research community's interests are incorporated.
• Provides guidance, support, and recommendations to senior leadership, including the development of plans, budgets, goals, and objectives to support the research enterprise.
• Serves as the champion for implementation and ongoing support of the infrastructure needed to support the Baystate Health's research portfolio.
• Collaborates with the UMass Chan-Baystate Academic Affairs, Finance, Baystate Medical Practices, Revenue Cycle, Compliance, Legal, and other departments involved in research and providing services to the Baystate Health, with the capacity to produce creative and innovative solutions and approaches to common issues and challenges.
• Promotes a management environment guided by exceptional customer service and continuous process improvement while preserving Office of Research protections, engaging in proactive cost recovery strategies, and harmonizing existing and new technology assets.
• Creates a culture of collaboration and business acumen, to attract sponsors and external collaborators and to empower investigators, with a strong focus on portfolio growth in high-impact areas of research.
• Demonstrates the ability to lead, motivate and communicate with others.
• Develops strategic plans for improvement in collaboration with Baystate leadership and identifies opportunities for performance improvement of research operations to ensure the quality conduct of research studies.
• Measures and present results of improvement efforts and ongoing performance measures of processes.
• Serves as an expert resource to researchers to manage issue escalation/resolution, achieve and maintain high levels of customer service, and manage the full range of research infrastructure activities.
• Provides leadership for the Office of Research staff and establishes effective business controls, risk management, staffing patterns, technology deployment and service recovery mechanisms to meet or exceed overall operations standards.
• Oversees any third party outsourcing agreements as they pertain to research operations.
• In collaboration with I&T, oversees the development and deployment of effective information systems for the research enterprise, ensuring that these systems connect smoothly with institutional systems (if applicable).

Requirements

• 7+ Years of experience.
• Advanced knowledge and understanding of concepts, policies and processes, and regulatory requirements associated with the development, implementation, and administration of funded scientific research studies.
• Demonstrated strategic planning and policy development skills gained at a senior level.
• Knowledge of the structure, operations and requirements of federal, state, and local financial regulatory and funding agencies.

Nice-to-haves

• Ability to communicate complex findings in a structured and clear manner and operate in a fast-paced, dynamic team environment.
• Knowledge of project management principles, practices, techniques, and tools.
• Strong relationship building skills and customer-service orientation.
• Creative and innovative thinking, ability to think out of box problem solving.
• Results/action oriented.