Senior Programs & Portfolio Lead, UAS Research

Mississippi State University; Starkville (MS); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Mississippi State University seeks an Associate Director of Programs for the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE). The role leads the program and project management team, overseeing Center of Excellence and Global portfolio execution at the MSU Main Campus.

The position requires translating sponsor requirements into executable plans, maintaining standardized PM processes, and delivering timely results across university and industry partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Management, Business, Sciences or Aviation-related field.
• Seven years of experience in aviation, engineering, program management, research, or UAV systems.

Responsibilities

• Provides direct leadership and supervision of the ASSURE program and project management team and establishes consistent expectations, processes, tools, and reporting across the research portfolio.
• Oversees program management of ASSURE Center of Excellence and ASSURE Global projects, including project initiation, schedules, milestones, budgets, deliverables, risk, closeout, and sponsor requirements.
• Serves as the primary ASSURE leadership point for project execution, portfolio status, workload coordination, and escalation of schedule, budget, staffing, or performance concerns to the Executive Director.
• Works with the Associate Director of Research to translate approved scope, research requirements, and sponsor expectations into executable project plans.
• Coordinates with project managers, principal investigators, university teams, industry partners, and sponsors to maintain schedules and ensure timely deliverables.
• Develops and maintains standardized project-management procedures, templates, dashboards, and performance measures for consistent execution across ASSURE projects.
• Monitors project budgets and expenditures; identifies funding or resource issues and coordinates corrective action.
• Coordinates proposal and award-transition activities to ensure new work is scoped, budgeted, staffed, initiated, and tracked.
• Maintains portfolio-level awareness of project status and provides routine reporting to leadership.
• Supports sponsor and stakeholder engagement related to project execution and represents ASSURE in discussions.
• Mentors and develops program-management staff and promotes effective communication across the organization.
• Works with leadership to identify staffing needs and improves project-management capacity.

Skills

Project management

Leadership

Budgeting

Scheduling

Risk management

FAA regulations

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree

Tools

Microsoft Office

Project management software

Computer networking

Job description

Mississippi State University seeks an Associate Director of Programs for the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE). The role leads the program and project management team, overseeing Center of Excellence and Global portfolio execution at the MSU Main Campus.

The position requires translating sponsor requirements into executable plans, maintaining standardized PM processes, and delivering timely results across university and industry partners.