Senior Research Manager, Evaluations

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research center at the University of Washington. Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice. IHME carries out its mission through a range of projects within different research areas including the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors; Future Health Scenarios; Cost Effectiveness and Efficiency; Resource Tracking; and Impact Evaluations. Our vision is to provide policymakers, donors, and researchers with the highest-quality quantitative evidence base, so all people live long lives in full health.

IHME is committed to providing the evidence base necessary to help solve the world’s most important health problems. This requires creativity and innovation, which are cultivated by an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment that respects and appreciates differences, embraces collaboration, and invites the voices of all IHME team members.

IHME has an outstanding opportunity for a Senior Research Manager to join their Evaluations team.

POSITION PURPOSE

The primary purpose of this position is to provide leadership, management, and supervision within the set of projects that focus on Impact Evaluations and Primary Data Collection at IHME. The incumbent must ensure efficient and effective survey design, high-caliber data quality management for a range of projects, and exceptional relationship management with key partners. They must orchestrate high-achieving teams efficiently and effectively in order to provide data that help answer key questions about health and its drivers. The individual must bring intellectual agility, deft planning skills, and command of the intellectual content to bear. The individual must design and implement systems that can be co-leveraged by multiple projects and allocate resources across those projects to achieve timely delivery against competing deadlines.

This position will work alongside other staff on complementary projects and will require knowledge and skill sharing and collective problem-solving. Overall, the Senior Research Manager will be a leader and a critical member of an agile, dynamic team planning, guiding, implementing, managing, and monitoring a complex research enterprise. This position is contingent on project funding availability and need.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategy and Management

Provide senior leadership to multiple projects to deliver timely, high-quality, and policy-relevant data and results on deadline.
Lead coordination and management with site partners. Devise and implement training and quality- control measures. Negotiate contracts with key partners. Work directly with Principal Investigators to maintain sterling relationships with partners while ensuring progress against timelines.
Lead the development of survey design and study protocols, and the execution of activities across multiple sites. Work directly with Principal Investigators to ensure that all aims are met.
Manage donor relationships with Principal Investigators. Ensure that donors are kept well-informed of progress and involved in project dissemination and consultation as appropriate.
Drive strategic planning, resource allocation, problem resolution, and team capacity building.
Advise, anticipate, and negotiate scope of work and resource allocation needs and adjustments across teams throughout the production cycle with partners as part of funding and collaborative agreements.
Manage resources to budgets. Make adjustments to budget and resource allocations as needed to meet enterprise-wide objectives.
Provide expert input on funding proposals, including helping to shape key objectives, providing background evidence supporting proposal aims, and identifying and scoping the resources required to achieve them.
Create, implement, and support systems for survey design, data quality management, and relationship management with key partners.
Develop deep understanding of the requirements and implications for collecting high-quality and relevant data alongside active analyses in order to produce project deliverables.
Devise and implement systems to execute plans to accomplish the work, allocating and managing resources against production schedules. Take into account complexities of the work, cross-team coordination, and myriad interdependencies.
Identify challenges and lags in data collection and analyses, raise them with leadership, and resolve them in order to maintain a timely production cycle.
Oversee the completion of data collection and integration, relevant analyses, engineering, review, and finalization of results into designated products for dissemination.
Identify, assess, and determine how to integrate new deliverables, enhancements, and improvements into the data collection process.

Knowledge command

Agilely command the intellectual material and key analytic concepts that relate to the projects the individual must facilitate. Individual is expected to develop an astute understanding of the material presented in journal articles, policy reports, and presentations that result from the projects on which they work and the methodological concepts behind them.
Understand how methods and analytic techniques map to specific surveys, data quality management machinery, and then on to the results and other deliverables as part of the delivery process.
Translate intellectual aims into concrete analytic, engineering, and production goals with accompanying implementation plans.
Thoroughly understand the primary data needs and challenges of the individual projects.
Identify need for and direct background research as needed to aid in project management, publication, and proposal development.
Ensure compliance with all federal, state, and University policies as required.

Supervision

Supervise and manage multi-person teams of professionals from different backgrounds and expertise to accomplish the deliverables. Set appropriate goals, monitor progress against them, and assess performance. Implement mechanisms for quality assurance of their work and deliverables.
Supervise managers of said teams and set overall project-level goals and metrics for charting progress. Track, assess, and advise on progress against metrics.
Mentor and build capacity of direct supervisees, as well as Researchers and Post-Bachelor Fellows, by providing guidance in the development of professional skills and helping them to understand how analytic and methodological undertakings link to project deliverables.
Contribute to leadership of those engaged in research management, including setting policies, advancing professional development, and driving new staff hiring and growth.
Formulate and implement effective strategies for motivating research teams and helping to ensure high achievement among all individuals on them.

General

Present complex topics and research results to external audiences, including researchers, collaborators, donors, and other interested stakeholders.
Train individuals in key components of the work.
Cultivate relationships and management of high-level collaborations.
Provide input to new proposal development and resource-seeking efforts aligned with the resource needs of the major research area.
Cultivate a culture of strong professional skills, accountability for the work requirements and to one’s teammates, agility to meet emerging needs, and clear, open communication about challenges in an ambitious, entrepreneurial, and highly collaborative workplace.

Other duties as assigned.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Master’s degree in social sciences or related field, plus five years’ related experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Demonstrated outstanding command of the knowledge base, underlying premises, and key analytic approaches inherent to Impact Evaluations and Primary Data Collection at IHME.
Project management experience with a range of different actors including other managers, data professionals, researchers, and engineers.
Proven success managing to deadline the production of key deliverables in an ambitious, highly entrepreneurial, and swiftly evolving organizational setting.
Analytically perceptive with a keen eye for detail and the ability to understand quickly how details relate to the big picture.
Demonstrated proclivity for developing systems and diagnostics that can be used to help elevate management, execution, and tracking in complex research projects.
Must exhibit strong desire and ability to learn intellectual content to facilitate highly complex scientific projects.
Exceptional communications skills, in particular the ability to convey intricate and complicated intellectual material and instructions to individuals of various skills and backgrounds.
High-level relationship management skills are critical to communicate with stakeholders at multiple levels, including the donor, researchers, administrators, and other external audiences.
Excellent interpersonal skills, a cooperative team player, energetic, able to develop productive relationships with IHME colleagues and external collaborators.
Proven success managing and leading dynamic teams.
Experience in one or more of the following: coordinating computational and analytic processes; designing and giving training in the social sciences; coordinating complex engineering and software development tasks; orchestrating research production delivery processes; organizing and assessing data and results on a large scale; troubleshooting complex systems.
Incumbent must be able to work independently and must be able to take multiple priorities and translate them into project completion through expert planning.
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced and collaborative environment to manage multiple priorities while coordinating resources needed to meet deadlines.
Have a US passport or the ability to obtain one.
A commitment to working to alongside others at IHME to illuminate the health impacts of systemic racism and to work within IHME to make our organization more diverse and inclusive.  See IHME’s DEI statement here: https://www.healthdata.org/about/careers/dei.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

Weekend and evening work sometimes required.
Ability to travel nationally and internationally up to 20% of the time.
This position is open to anyone authorized to work in the US. The UW is not able to sponsor visas for staff positions.
Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote in the US.

Application Process:

The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others.  Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment, you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.


Applicants considered for this position will be required to disclose if they are the subject of any substantiated findings or current investigations related to sexual misconduct at their current employment and past employment. Disclosure is required under Washington state law.


Committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff, the University of Washington will honor your experiences, perspectives and unique identity. Together, our community strives to create and maintain working and learning environments that are inclusive, equitable and welcoming.

The University of Washington is a leader in environmental stewardship & sustainability, and committed to becoming climate neutral.

The University of Washington is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information.

To request disability accommodation in the application process, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 or dso@uw.edu.

COVID-19 VACCINATION REQUIREMENT

Governor Inslee's Proclamation 21-14.2 requires employees of higher education and healthcare institutions to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 unless a medical or religious exemption is approved. Being fully vaccinated means that an individual is at least two weeks past their final dose of an authorized COVID-19 vaccine regimen. As a condition of employment, newly hired employees will be required to provide proof of their COVID-19 vaccination. View the Final candidate guide to COVID-19 vaccination requirement webpage for information about the medical or religious exemption process for final candidates.