The posting
Mission
The purpose of this role is to ensure professional, compliant, and execution-oriented award and post-award management of externally funded research projects, with a primary focus on German funding schemes. The Grant Manager will support Principal Investigators, Faculty, research teams, and administrative stakeholders in delivering funded projects on time, within budget, and in full compliance with funder, legal, financial, and institutional requirements.
This role is central to building Constructor Labs’ and Constructor University research operations capability and enabling high-quality collaboration between researchers, finance, legal, HR, external partners, and funding bodies.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Pillar 1: Pre-Award Grant Management
- Monitor funding landscapes (German Funding Scemes like DFG, BMBFTR, DAAD, and others); maintain the grants calendar and build a forward-looking application pipeline.
- Match funding opportunities to the research activities of Constructor Labs Principal Investigators (PIs) and Constructor University Faculty; initiate and coordinate proposal development.
- Co-develop competitive grant proposals with PIs and faculty, including budget design, and compliance requirements.
- Coordinate grant agreement and consortium agreement negotiations with Legal, and support partner contract negotiations where Constructor University or Constructor Labs leads.
Pillar 2 Post-Award Grant Management
- Own the full post-award lifecycle across a portfolio of funded research projects — from contract setup through implementation, reporting, amendments, and close-out — ensuring milestones, deliverables, budgets, and contractual commitments are tracked and met.
- Monitor project budgets, eligible costs, spending rates, and financial risks in close cooperation with Controlling Team; coordinate amendments, budget reallocations, extensions, partner changes, and other modifications with all relevant internal and external stakeholders.
- Prepare and coordinate scientific, narrative, and administrative reports for funders, including DFG, BMBFTR, DAAD, and other relevant funding schemes; track funder rules, reporting templates, and compliance obligations and ensure they are reflected in internal processes.
- Serve as the primary liaison between researchers, Finance, Legal, HR, consortium partners, and funders; support consortium management including partner reporting, documentation collection, and meeting coordination.
- Support the implementation and operation of standardised software and digital tools across all active projects, as approved by the Director of Research and Transfer.
Qualifications and Experience:
Experience:
- 2–5 years of experience in grant management, research project management, research administration, sponsored projects, or third-party funded project administration.
- Hands-on experience managing research projects in a university, research institute, RTO, technology organisation, or research-intensive environment.
- Practical understanding of German research funding systems, ideally including DFG, BMBFTR, DAAD, or comparable public funding programmes.
- Experience with project budgets, financial monitoring, eligible-cost rules, funder reporting, audits, and documentation standards.
- Experience working with Principal Investigators, researchers, finance teams, legal teams, HR, external partners, and funding bodies.
- Experience managing several projects simultaneously with different deadlines, funder rules, reporting cycles, and stakeholder expectations.
Skills & Competencies
- Strong project management discipline: able to convert complex grant agreements into clear workplans, deadlines, responsibilities, and reporting routines, and manage multiple projects in parallel.
- Strong understanding of financial and administrative compliance in externally funded research projects; able to manage budgets, forecasts, cost eligibility questions in a structured way.
- Strong stakeholder coordination and communication skills: able to work effectively with researchers, Finance, Legal, HR, external partners, and funders, and explain funding requirements in a practical, service-oriented way.
- High ownership mindset: proactively chases inputs, resolves inconsistencies, anticipates risks, and moves projects forward without waiting for perfect conditions.
- Excellent attention to detail, accuracy, and documentation habits.
- Experience implementing or operating research or project management information systems and building portfolio dashboards for leadership reporting is a strong advantage.
Education & Languages
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in natural sciences, business administration, economics, public administration, science management, project management, research administration, or a related field.
- Fluent German and English (written and spoken).
What This Role Is (and Is Not)
This role IS
- A hands-on pre- and post-award project management role for externally funded research projects.
- Operational, detail-oriented, and compliance-driven.
- Central to ensuring that funded research projects are delivered on time, within budget, and in accordance with funder requirements.
- A cross-functional role connecting researchers, finance, legal, HR, external partners, and funding agencies.
This role is NOT
- A purely strategic or advisory role.
- A fundraising-only or proposal-writing-only position.
- A senior RTO leadership role with responsibility for the full research funding strategy.
- A purely academic research role.
