Program Operations Specialist

Program Operations Specialist, Hire Hopkins

Hire Hopkins is the university-wide employer engagement function at Johns Hopkins University, within Integrative Learning and Life Design (ILLD). We partner with employers across industries to connect Hopkins students and postdocs — across all nine academic divisions — with meaningful internships, full-time roles, and experiential learning opportunities. We are a remote-first office that works at the intersection of senior employer relationships, school-facing program delivery, and operational excellence.

We are seeking a Program Operations Specialist, Hire Hopkins who will be operational backbone of Hire Hopkins. Reporting to the Executive Director, this role provides the administrative, technology, and data stewardship that allows directors, sector leads, and the broader team to focus on building employer relationships and delivering student outcomes.

This is a high-leverage operational role for someone who enjoys building order in a busy, growing team. The work spans administrative coordination, technology operations, and data hygiene — with the goal of running clean, reliable systems that the rest of the office depends on.

The Executive Director, Hire Hopkins, is the role's manager. The Senior Director of Operations is a major day-to-day stakeholder who relies on this role for operational support across the employer engagement engine. Day-to-day work allocation is coordinated between the two directors.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities

Administrative Operations

• Manage the Hire Hopkins email inbox as the operational triage point for the office — fielding inbound inquiries from employers, school partners, and stakeholders; routing messages to the appropriate sector lead, director, or team member; and tracking response status to ensure no inquiry falls through gaps.
• Plan, create, and distribute mechanisms for feedback from hiring partners, JHU stakeholders, and students.
• Own expense management in Concur, including processing reports, tracking and reconciling transactions, and ensuring policy compliance.
• Maintain vendor relationships and ensure annual contracts, subscriptions, and operational needs are covered.
• Support sector leads and program directors on the administrative and logistical components of employer events, hiring initiatives, and treks — including event registration setup, Handshake event configuration, materials preparation, and post-event follow-up tracking.
• Optimize administrative processes for the office internally, with stakeholders, and with employers — building scalable workflows as the team grows.

Technology Operations

• Maintain the technology infrastructure that supports the office's day-to-day work, including the website, SharePoint sites, CRM, Handshake, and other operational systems.
• Maintain and update the Hire Hopkins website with current content, employer partner information, and team materials.
• Manage SharePoint sites and ensure proper file organization, document version control, and team access permissions.
• Execute CRM management and maintenance, including data entry support, user access, and routine system maintenance, in alignment with operational standards set by the Senior Director of Operations.
• Collaborate with the Handshake system administrator to monitor job postings and employer interactions, ensuring sector leads' employers and opportunities are properly tagged and visible to the right student populations.
• Serve as the day-to-day operational liaison to the Office of Digital Transformation (ODT) on technology operations, integrations, and platform support.
• Support the Executive Director and the Senior Director of Operations in evaluating new technology solutions for the office's operational needs.

Data Stewardship & Reporting

• Hire Hopkins is responsible for the quality and accuracy of its own office-level data; the Office of Digital Transformation (ODT) is the official institutional data office and is responsible for reporting Hopkins outcomes data to university leadership. This role owns the clean line between the two: ensuring Hire Hopkins's operational data is accurate, current, and ready for ODT to use in their institutional reporting.
• Own day-to-day data hygiene and accuracy across Hire Hopkins systems — including CRM data quality, Handshake job tagging, event registration records, and employer engagement records.
• Create, maintain, and analyze accurate records of event details, including registrations, feedback surveys, and outcomes.
• Partner with ODT to ensure Hire Hopkins data is properly cleaned, formatted, and delivered for the institutional reporting they own; serve as the Hire Hopkins point of contact for ODT's data requests and data infrastructure work.
• Perform basic data analysis on internal operational metrics, survey results, and event outcomes; generate insights and recommend operational improvements for use within the office.
• Create regular internal reports on operational metrics, employer engagement activity, and event outcomes for use by the team and the leadership of the office.
• Use data visualization tools (Excel, PowerBI) to present operational insights to non-technical audiences within the team.

Special Skills, Knowledge & Abilities

• Strong problem-solving and analytical abilities.
• Excellence in stakeholder communication, including the ability to manage multiple stakeholders' needs with transparency and good judgment about prioritization.
• Initiative and ownership mindset.
• Process improvement orientation.
• Attention to detail and organizational skills.
• Ability to handle confidential information with discretion.
• Commitment to data security compliance (FERPA and PII).

Who Might Thrive in This Role

• You enjoy working with data, you're tech-savvy, and you have strong organizational skills. You independently and collaboratively resolve complex problems while maintaining a positive, solution-oriented attitude. You're adaptable, data-focused, and outcomes-driven.
• You're comfortable supporting multiple stakeholders across a busy team — and you can manage competing requests with grace, transparency, and good judgment about prioritization. You're comfortable being a connector and operator who keeps the trains running rather than someone who needs to be in the spotlight.
• Hire Hopkins is a remote-first office with the culture of a startup and the resources of a large institution. You'll need to enjoy remote work and be available 9am–5pm EST. We provide a laptop and a cellphone.

• Bachelor's Degree.
• Three years progressively responsible experience in program administration in an academic environment.
• Additional education may substitute for required experience and additional related experience may substitute for required education beyond a high school diploma/graduation equivalent, to the extent permitted by the JHU equivalency formula.

• Five plus years of experience in operations, program administration, or related field.
• Demonstrated experience owning operational initiatives and complex projects in a multi-stakeholder environment.
• Strong analytical skills with experience in data-driven problem solving and operational reporting.
• Advanced proficiency with business technology tools (Microsoft Office Suite, CRM systems).
• Proficiency with data visualization tools (Excel and PowerBI).
• Competency with website management and SharePoint administration.
• Experience supporting a growing, multi-team office or function.