Project Manager, Federally Funded Research Program

California-Institute-of-Technology; Pasadena (CA); On-site; USD 89,000 - 101,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Retirement savings plan

Paid time off

Job summary

Caltech in Pasadena seeks a Project Manager to run ELECTRA, a national AI-enabled lab network funded by NSF. You will own the budget, compliance, and reporting, and serve as the connective tissue between the ELECTRA team, NSF, other PCL Nodes, and Caltech leadership.

The role requires coordinating cross-institution partners, maintaining subaward agreements, and leading governance with risk analyses and milestones.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 2+ years managing complex federally funded research programs or equivalent experience.
• Experience managing multi-million-dollar awards with multiple institutional partners.
• Working knowledge of federal budget management, reporting, and compliance.
• Excellent written and oral communication, including drafting technical report content and preparing external presentations.
• Demonstrated independence coordinating scientists, engineers, administrators, and external partners.

Responsibilities

• Lead full life-cycle program operations for a multi-million-dollar, multi-institution award: budget tracking, timelines, deliverables, annual reviews and milestone progress, compliance and reporting across the entire PCL Node partnership.
• Serve as ELECTRA's primary liaison to the NSF program officer, other PCL Nodes, and the advisory board, presenting reports and briefings for NSF and leadership.
• Maintain inter-institutional collaboration and subaward agreements, keeping scope, budget, and data sharing aligned.
• Run program governance, including meeting cadence, risk analysis, and internal/external documentation, tracking dependencies across teams to keep milestones on schedule.
• Organize user recruitment, onboarding workshops, and outreach events, including to R2 universities and two-year colleges, and manage external communications and web presence.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and coordination of node personnel.
• Lead development of the post-award sustainability plan, including cost-recovery, industry engagement, follow-on funding, technology transfer and IP activity with institutional offices.

Skills

Budget management

NSF/NIH/DARPA program management

Stakeholder coordination

Technical writing

Cross-institution collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree

Advanced degree

Job description

Caltech in Pasadena seeks a Project Manager to run ELECTRA, a national AI-enabled lab network funded by NSF. You will own the budget, compliance, and reporting, and serve as the connective tissue between the ELECTRA team, NSF, other PCL Nodes, and Caltech leadership.

The role requires coordinating cross-institution partners, maintaining subaward agreements, and leading governance with risk analyses and milestones.