Lab Manager

Job Description

This position has been deemed critical by the School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Office and is exempt from the hiring freeze.

Work Arrangement: This is a hybrid position based on the Stanford campus, with a minimum of 3 days per week on site. May require occasional evenings/weekends to accommodate participant scheduling and study sessions.

Budgeted Salary: The budgeted base salary range for this position is $33.00 to $36.50 per hour.

The School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) ( is the foundation of a liberal arts education at Stanford. The school encompasses 24 departments and 25 interdisciplinary programs. H&S is home to fundamental and applied research, where free, open, and critical inquiry is pursued across disciplines. As the university's largest school, H&S serves as the foundation of a Stanford undergraduate education no matter which discipline students pursue as a major. Graduate students work alongside world-renowned faculty to pursue and shape foundational research that leads to breakthroughs and discoveries that shed new light on the past, influence the present, and shape the future. Together, faculty and students in H&S engage in inspirational teaching, learning, and research every day.

Department/Program Description:

The Social Interaction Lab, directed by Prof. Robert Hawkins in Stanford's Department of Linguistics, studies the cognitive and social foundations of human communication and conversation, combining behavioral experiments with computational modeling. The lab runs a high volume of concurrent human-subjects research projects.

Position Summary

The Social Interaction Lab is seeking a Lab Manager to co-manage lab operations alongside our current lab manager, splitting responsibilities across the lab's growing project portfolio. This position is essential to core lab operations: participant recruitment and scheduling, IRB protocol management and compliance, onboarding and supervising undergraduate research assistants, and day-to-day study logistics across multiple concurrent projects. The role requires sound judgment, strong organizational skills, and the ability to work closely with the PI, graduate students, and research staff.

This is a 100% FTE, one-year fixed-term (9/1/2026 - 8/31/2027), non-exempt (hourly) position.

Preferred Requirements

Additional highly preferred qualifications for this position include:

• Prior experience with human-subjects research administration and/or IRB compliance.

• provide the additional qualifications that are critical for the role.

• Experience coordinating participant recruitment and scheduling (e.g., SONA, Prolific, or similar platforms).

• Experience supervising or mentoring undergraduate research assistants.

• Comfortable managing multiple concurrent projects and shifting priorities.

• Bachelor's degree in the cognitive sciences, or a mathematical or computational field preferred.