The Department of e-Research at King's College London (KCL) is looking for an Administration Manager (AM) to support our expanding activities across the University. e-Research is a small, but growing, team of technical experts implementing and managing a wide range of computing solutions to support a diverse range of academic research. We are looking to recruit an Administration Manager to help the team with managing administrative activities such as: budget reporting, stakeholder communications, coordination of project management tasks, KPI reporting, coordination of procurement activities, etc. 

The e-Research Administration Manager is a new role in the e-Research team. This post presents a great opportunity to be one of the early recruits into a new and growing team, with significant investment planned over the next 3 years. The KCL is at the start of a significant reboot of its e-Research function having invested £3,000,000+ over the past 18 months, on core platforms for providing Cloud, Storage and High Performance Computing capabilities to its world-leading researchers.  

Having recently implemented some of our core technology platforms, we are now working to ensure that these deliver to the expectations of the KCL research community. We need to ensure that these systems are widely adopted across the university, that we recover significant costs from the use of these platforms, that our budgets are managed accurately, and the university senior management have good visibility of our endeavours and activities. We are recruiting an Administration Manager to help us with the administrative tasks underlying this next phase of e-Research implementation at KCL. 

The Administration Manager is a critical role for helping the e-Research team grow and strive for continual operational improvements. The Administration Manager will work closely with the e-Research senior staff, in key activities such as: (i) managing communications and messaging to our user base and relevant stakeholders across the university, (ii) helping to facilitate and manage key meetings with our stakeholders, (iii) helping to coordinate our complex project workflows, (iv) overseeing and reporting on our budgets and KPIs, (v) working with Finance to establish and improve our recharging models, (vi) managing and owning administrative tasks and responsibilities delegated from the senior members of the e-Research team in support of their activities, and (vii) providing a first-line for queries to e-Research regarding administrative tasks or information amongst other tasks and responsibilities (amongst other responsibilities). 

KCL is a diverse, research-focused University with an annual research income of around £200 million. A significant proportion of this income is for research projects which will benefit from using the core e-Research platforms. The e-Research Administration Manager will play a key role in helping more research projects adopt our platforms and support, and making e-Research at KCL financially sustainable. 

The e-Research Administration Manager will work with other similar roles and administrative leads within the Research Management and Innovation Directorate. Career development in this role will be actively encouraged, including attending training and professional conferences. The Administration Manager will have the opportunity to shape the growth of the strategically important e-Research function at King's College London. 

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract . 

This is a full-time post.

Key Responsibilities

The Administration Manager will be responsible for a wide variety of administrative tasks to aid the operation of the e-Research function. Some of these tasks will be standard across an administration manager role in many different business operations.  

However, a summary of some of the key responsibilities for the Administration Manager (AM) in the e-Research department are as follows: 

• e-Research is a Department within the Research Management and Innovation Directorate (RMID) at KCL. Governance groups are in the process of being formed to ensure that there is academic- and cross-Faculty oversight of both the strategic direction of e-Research, as well as the operational performance of the services and support. The e-Research Administration Manager will be responsible for helping to coordinate and administer these e-Research governance groups. The e-Research Administration Manager will work to ensure that these Groups are effective, engaging, and help to establish e-Research across KCL. 
• You will work with the senior members of the e-Research team to develop meeting documentation (e.g., Terms of Reference, Agendas, Action Logs) coordinate meetings in calendars of participants, record meeting minutes, and manage and update meeting Actions logs.
• Responsible for coordinating e-Research (all-staff) team meetings, including managing the logistics (room booking, calendar invites, etc.) 
• You will manage the communications for the e-Research team. The communications will include the high-level web landing pages for KCL (on the KCL webpage), the internal e-Research information and documentation pages, as well as e-mail distribution lists and newsletters, and social media accounts.
• It will be the responsibility of the e-Research Administration Manager (with the support and input of the e-Research team) to keep this public-facing information up to date, relevant and of high-quality. 
• Collaborate with Communication specialists in the Research Management and Innovation Directorate (RMID), as well as the KCL Corporate Communications team, as required. 
• Develop use cases and success stories from our user base, to help communicate the role of e-Research across KCL.
• Together with the senior members of the e-Research team, the e-Research Administration Manager will be responsible for helping to manage the e-Research budgets. These budgets are primarily for maintaining and updating, augmenting and refreshing infrastructure platforms, as well as implementing new platforms and services.
• The e-Research Administration Manager will work with the RMID Finance Partner to develop regular reports on e-Research transactions and budgets.
• The Administration Manager will also be responsible for assisting in other finance and purchasing activities within e-Research, such as processing expense reimbursements, progressing small purchases, overseeing invoicing, managing recurring licenses, etc.
• Help to facilitate significant new implementations in the team, in the role of a project coordinator or project manager. The Administration Manager will work with the other e-Research Leads to facilitate complex work streams and deployments, using standard Agile project management methodologies.
• Develop and publish reports on the performance of e-Research. These reports will initially include information on activities such as: (i) usage of our key platforms, (ii) progress with existing project work, (iii) budget transactions and forecasting, and (iv) operational KPIs, etc.
• Facilitate contract discussions, which have a significant e-Research dependency, between research groups and the RMID Research Contracts team. The Administration Manager will work to understand the requirements from the research group, and convey these to the Contracts Team
• Help to project-manage these contract discussions and development, ensuring that they concluded in a timely manner. 
• Responsible for helping to develop, improve, promote and manage the recharging model in e-Research. This recharging model, for the use of e-Research systems and support, is key to the sustainable growth of e-Research, and this will be a key responsibility of the Administration Manager. 

The above list of responsibilities is not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post, and the nature of the role. 

Skills, knowledge, and experience

The e-Research Administration Manager should have the skills, knowledge and experience gained through employment in an administration management role, in a complex and challenging business environment.  

This section will cover some of the specific skills, knowledge and experience expected from candidates applying for this role. 

Essential criteria  

Candidates must provide clear evidence of the following essential qualifications, experience and knowledge, in their application: 

1. Bachelor's degree or equivalent substantial experience relevant to this role. 
2. Experience or working in an administration management role, with similar responsibilities to those defined in this job description. 
3. Candidates must have a commitment and expressed interest to gain more knowledge about academic research and e-Research activities (such as AI, High Performance Computing, Research Data Management, etc.), if they don't have previous expression in this area. 
4. Candidates must have some knowledge of budget management, including developing periodic reporting. 
5. Candidates must have excellent communication skills, especially written. They must be able to write clearly and effectively to convey a message, or respond to a question or query. 
6. Candidates must have good computing skills appropriate for this role, and objectives to improve these skills through coursework or training. 
7. Candidates must have demonstrable experience either in a significant procurement exercise, or facilitating a recruitment campaign for senior roles in an organisation, or involvement in a project with significant budget or complexity, either as a coordinator, or other project role.

Experience

• Should have experience of working in a research environment, and have some understanding of the academic research life cycle.
• Ideally have experience of working in a technology-based company or organisation, where the majority of the staff have a technical role.

Interviews will be held on the KCL campus in central London at a date to be specified. The interview will consist of a presentation from the candidates demonstrating their relevant experience for the role, as well as questions and potentially tasks for the candidate to demonstrate their appropriate knowledge and skills for the role.