Senior Clinical Research Program Manager

Senior Clinical Research Program Manager

The Senior Clinical Research Program Manager provides strategic, operational, and administrative leadership for complex, externally funded public health and clinical research programs. Overseeing large, multi-year federally funded projects, this role translates scientific goals into efficient operations to ensure full compliance with regulatory, institutional, and sponsor guidelines while maintaining project schedules and budgets. Managing the complete research lifecycle—from planning and recruitment to implementation and closeout—the Program Manager partners closely with Principal Investigators, faculty, institutional partners, and community organizations to drive successful clinical and community-based research portfolios.

Responsibilities

• Lead the planning, implementation, and ongoing management of large, complex, multi-year clinical, public health, community-based, and population health research programs, including federally funded projects.
• Partner with PIs and research faculty to translate scientific aims, study protocols, grant commitments, and sponsor requirements into operational plans, timelines, milestones, and deliverables.
• Maintain a strong working understanding of research objectives, study designs, populations, interventions, outcomes, and data collection requirements to effectively manage program implementation.
• Manage a portfolio of multiple research grants and projects concurrently, maintaining oversight of scope, timelines, milestones, deliverables, budgets, staffing, recruitment, and sponsor requirements.
• Develop and maintain project management systems and dashboards to monitor performance, identify risks, and provide PIs and leadership with timely information on project status.
• Proactively identify scientific, operational, financial, and resource challenges and work with investigators and project teams to develop and implement solutions.
• Coordinate activities across investigators, research teams, collaborating institutions, clinical sites, community partners, subcontractors, and other stakeholders.
• Ensure timely completion of sponsor deliverables, progress reports, and other grant or contractual requirements.
• Lead the development and implementation of participant recruitment, enrollment, retention, and engagement strategies for human subjects research.
• Establish recruitment plans and performance targets aligned with approved protocols and funded research objectives.
• Monitor recruitment and enrollment performance and develop corrective strategies when established milestones are not being achieved.
• Oversee operational workflows for participant identification, outreach, screening, informed consent, enrollment, scheduling, follow-up, data collection, and retention.
• Work with investigators, clinical partners, community organizations, and research teams to identify and address barriers to recruitment and participation.
• Ensure research activities are implemented efficiently and consistently with approved protocols, study requirements, and participant protections.
• Coordinate regulatory and compliance activities associated with human subjects research, including IRB submissions, amendments, continuing reviews, protocol documentation, and required approvals.
• Ensure research activities comply with institutional policies, sponsor requirements, approved protocols, and applicable federal regulations.
• Establish appropriate research documentation, standard operating procedures, quality-control processes, and audit-ready records.
• Partner with PIs, research administration, finance, and pre- and post-award teams to support effective management of sponsored research.
• Partner with Research Administration team to monitor project budgets, expenditures, staffing, personnel effort, subawards, contracts, and other financial activities in relation to approved grant plans and project progress.
• Identify budget variances, resource needs, and other issues that may affect successful project implementation.
• Support grant submissions, progress reports, modifications, renewals, and closeout activities as appropriate.
• Supervise, mentor, and provide day-to-day leadership to research project coordinators, research assistants, and other program personnel as assigned.
• Establish clear roles, responsibilities, performance expectations, and accountability across project teams.
• Assess staffing and resource requirements across the research portfolio and make recommendations to PIs and research leadership.
• Facilitate project meetings and communication across multidisciplinary teams and ensure appropriate follow-up on decisions and action items.
• Serve as a key liaison among PIs, faculty investigators, research staff, institutional leadership, sponsors, collaborating organizations, healthcare partners, and community stakeholders.
• Promote collaboration, accountability, operational consistency, and continuous improvement across the research portfolio.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of public health, clinical or community-based research, and human subjects research principles.
• Ability to understand scientific aims, study designs, research protocols, and methodologies and translate them into executable operational plans.
• Advanced project and program management skills with the ability to oversee multiple complex research projects simultaneously.
• Strong knowledge of participant recruitment, enrollment, engagement, and retention strategies.
• Knowledge of IRB development and processes, human subjects protections, research compliance, and federal sponsored-research requirements.
• Strong financial and analytical skills, including research budget and resource management.
• Demonstrated ability to identify risks, solve complex operational problems, and drive projects to successful completion.
• Strong leadership and staff-management skills with the ability to build accountability across multidisciplinary teams.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills and the ability to work effectively with investigators, senior leadership, sponsors, research staff, healthcare organizations, and community partners.
• Ability to exercise independent judgment, manage competing priorities, and operate effectively in a complex, deadline-driven research environment.

Education

• **Doctoral or clinical degrees listed above combined with an MBA or other advanced degrees in business, management, or administration strongly preferred.

Required Skills

• Minimum of seven (7) years of progressively responsible experience managing complex clinical, public health, community-based, or population health research programs and projects. Demonstrated experience leading large, multi-year, external