Science Administration Manager

In the Crick's Service Delivery Team.

Part of Crick Operations.

Deadline for applications has passed.

Key information

Job reference
R806
Salary
From £47,500 with benefits, subject to skills and experience.
Applications closed
23 August 2022, 23:59 BST
Hours per week
36 (full time)
Number of positions
2
Posted 09 August 2022

Science Administration Manager

Reports to: Service Delivery Operations Manager

This is a full-time, permanent position on Crick terms and conditions of employment.

Summary

The Francis Crick Institute is a partnership between the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the Wellcome Trust, University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and King’s College London dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease.

Our Service Delivery Team provide high-quality operational and administrative support by being the first point of contact for all operational and administrative queries. They work collaboratively with other teams in resolving all queries from the scientist enabling them to focus on their science

The Science Administration Manager, also referred to as the Service Delivery Manager internally at the Crick, is a newly created role in the team intended to manage a team of Science Operations Administrators across multiple floors. The team are the first point of contact for our science colleagues for all operational queries and are required to resolve or co-ordinate their resolution.

You will work alongside another Service Delivery Manager in developing and managing the administration teams to ensure that all administration is co-ordinated, processes are developed, monitored, followed and continuously assessed to ensure that the team are providing the highest level of operational support to the science. It requires an experienced professional in business support and administration who has developed management skills, thrives in a busy and changing environment, is experienced in strategic resource planning, understands what makes an excellent customer experience and is able to see the bigger picture/ is capable of 'whole systems thinking'.

You should have a flexible and process-driven approach to your work and be able to apply your knowledge to identify and implement solutions. You should be comfortable working interactively with colleagues at all levels, including senior scientists and professional services teams.

Key responsibilities

These include but are not limited to:

  • To be responsible for developing, managing and overseeing all aspects of the co-ordination of administrative service delivery by being the first point of contact, and source of expertise to Group leaders and Scientific Technology Platform (STP) leads for the administration of the full lifecycle of their research projects.
  • To identify opportunities to continually improve processes and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions including implementing, managing, and improving administrative processes by creating templates, standard approaches across the floors, guidance documents, workflows processes, management information (MI) and service level agreements.
  • The line management, induction, and development of the Science Operations Administrators across multiple floors.
  • To provide project support to senior staff as required, including arranging meetings and acting as the point of contact between external collaborators, operational teams and research staff.
  • To provide strategic input into staff resource planning to ensure appropriate level of resources are available to each group/STP at all times.
  • To generate and deliver timely and accurate reports as required.
  • To take and transcribe formal minutes at some senior meetings and distribute in a timely manner.
  • To act as first point of contact for any concerns raised by the Group Leaders’ and STP leads and deal with these in a proactive, solution driven manner.
  • To promote a ‘can do’, problem-solving approach to identify solutions for challenges and embed in the team.
  • Using stakeholder feedback, promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement; developing team members required knowledge and the skills needed to improve organisational and individual effectiveness.

Key experience and competencies

The post holder should embody and demonstrate our core Crick values: bold, imaginative, open, dynamic and collegial, in addition to the following:

Essential

Qualifications, experience and competencies:

  • Educated to A level/NVQ4 standard or relevant experience.
  • Management experience of an operational team, with proven ability to motivate and manage the performance of teams using stakeholder feedback and MI data.
  • Experience of managing change, setting up processes and procedures.
  • Skilled in looking at the wider picture and providing solutions through a variety of problem-solving techniques.
  • Experience of delivering a high level of customer service.
  • Experience in sensitively challenging deeply held ways of working/ beliefs or embedded routines.
  • Well-developed IT skills, in particular the ability to handle complex electronic diaries, the wider MS Office suite of programmes including Excel and PowerPoint, and some experience of using an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package. The post holder should also be confident and able to quickly learn new IT skills and software packages as required.
  • Proven ability to foreplan and anticipate requirements, proactively planning own (and others’ workloads) to manage time effectively, progress tasks concurrently and work to deadlines.
  • Good written, oral, and interpersonal skills with the ability to develop positive working relationships with both research and operational staff at all levels (internal and external)
  • Proactive approach, with ability to work independently and be solution focused 
  • Skilled in using a broad range of data to identify opportunities for improvement.

Desirable

Qualifications, experience and competencies:

  • Evidence of continued professional development
  • Project management skills