Professional Services Manager

Department

Globus Professional Services

About the Department

Globus (www.globus.org) is a mission-driven organization dedicated to enabling discovery by delivering advanced data management and computation capabilities to researchers worldwide. As a unit within The University of Chicago, Globus develops and operates commercial-quality, software-as-a-service used by thousands of institutions, including research universities, national laboratories, federal agencies, and commercial research organizations.

Core features are free for non-profit researchers, and the Globus service is sustained through institutional subscriptions that unlock advanced features for organizations needing greater control, compliance support, and deeper integration with their research computing environment. This model reflects the organization’s core commitment: making secure, reliable cyberinfrastructure services accessible to the broadest possible research community.

The Globus team comprises professional software developers and business operations staff, as well Globus Labs, a dedicated research group pioneering novel methods and technologies. Team members are geographically distributed—a structure that reflects the global nature of the research communities we serve—while maintaining a collaborative culture focused on making an impact in disciplines ranging from the life sciences and astronomy, to materials science and public policy.

The Globus professional services team develops solutions in support of external organizations’ data-intensive research, building on their ongoing investments in Globus. Projects are funded by the recipient organizations, typically supported by grants from federal agencies including NSF, NIH, DOE, and are carried out by distributed teams spanning multiple institutions.

The work typically involves large-scale cyberinfrastructure: distributed computation, high-volume scientific data management, and software systems that must perform reliably at the scale demanded by modern research workflows. Professional services team members are committed to advancing the research mission of the scientific community by delivering reliable, high-quality software infrastructure accessible to the broadest possible set of researchers.

Job Summary

We seek a Professional Services Manager to lead the successful planning, execution, and delivery of long-running, grant-funded solution development projects conducted in collaboration with partner institutions. As a senior individual contributor and team leader you will be the primary liaison between technical staff, institutional partners, principal investigators, funding agency program officers, and organizational leadership.

This role operates at the intersection of software project management, technical leadership, and organizational diplomacy. You will provide guidance and oversight to project team members and serve as the primary point of contact with faculty, sponsors, and leadership, overseeing all project operations including development methodology, deliverables and timelines, reporting and communications, and budget management.

You will be successful if you are equally comfortable leading a sprint planning session with engineers, presenting milestone progress to a funding program officer, and navigating the institutional sensitivities that arise in multi-institutional research collaborations.

Multi-institutional, grant-funded software projects sit at the frontier of research infrastructure, and the systems we develop directly enable scientific discovery across disciplines. You are a good fit for this role if you are a project leader who thrives on complexity: someone energized by the challenge of aligning distributed teams, building trust across institutional boundaries, and delivering technical results that serve the research mission.

The work requires the rigor of professional project management, the knowledge to engage with technical staff, and the relationship intelligence to operate effectively in the academic and non-profit research ecosystem. This position is wholly or partially funded by contractual grant funding which is renewed under provisions set by the grantor of the contract.

Do you currently lead development of custom solutions and applications in advanced computing environments? Do you love learning about leading edge research and creating innovative solutions to facilitate breakthrough discoveries? Do you enjoy engaging with the research community to make advanced capabilities available to all? If so, you will love the collaborative, mission-driven environment at Globus.

Responsibilities

• Defines project scope, deliverables, and milestones in collaboration with principal investigators, partner institution leads, and organizational leadership.
• Develops and maintains comprehensive project plans, work breakdown structures, timelines, resource plans, and risk mitigation plans.
• Monitors progress across workstreams and initiates corrective actions to mitigate schedule, scope, and budget risks.
• Acts as the primary point of contact for, coordinates the efforts of, and develops productive working relationships with staff at partner institutions.
• Facilitates team meetings and working groups, ensuring stakeholders are engaged.
• Navigates sensitive inter-institutional dynamics with professionalism and discretion, building consensus, preserving relationships and keeping projects on track.
• Serves as the primary point of escalation and communication for stakeholders at all levels, including technical staff, principal investigators, leadership, and program officers.
• Prepares and delivers updates on project direction, scope, risk and schedule, tailored to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Supports dissemination activities including preparation of reports and presentations, and represents the University of Chicago at meetings, workshops, conferences, and site visits.
• Develops and maintains working knowledge of the Globus platform and the technical domains relevant to projects.
• Collaborates with software developers to translate research requirements into actionable project plans, considering staff and related system dependencies.
• Facilitates technical design discussions and architecture reviews.
• Coordinates with Globus product management, software development, and support teams to ensure project requirements and field learnings are reflected in product plans.
• Serves as project lead to coordinate complex information technology changes and ensure the success of enterprise-level application rollouts. Works with University units and the client community to develop detailed business requirements.
• Uses specialized depth and breadth of expertise in a specific career track to build project plans, including budgets and human resource plans. Provides expertise on managing projects. Maintain project web presence, project archives and project documentation.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

• Education: Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
• Work Experience: Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 7+ years of work experience in a related job discipline.
• Certifications: Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification - Project Management Institute ---

Preferred Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science, engineering, or related field strongly preferred.
• Experience: Seven years of professional experience in a variety of progressively responsible information technology roles.
• Managing long-running software development projects with distributed teams, within variable funding, milestone and deliverable constraints.
• Facilitating productive technical discussions and working sessions across geographical and organizationally distributed teams.
• Certifications: PMP (Project Management Professional).
• Technical Skills or Knowledge: Knowledge of concepts, practices, and procedures of software development.
• Proficient in software development methodologies including Agile, Scrum, or hybrid approaches.
• Demonstrated mastery of project management fundamentals such as monitoring project progress, tracking effort and expenditure, and anticipating emerging risks to schedule, scope, budget, or stakeholder relationships.
• Familiarity with the architecture and operational characteristics of research computing and cyberinfrastructure.
• In­-depth understanding of software architectural frameworks, development methodologies, tools, and techniques.
• Familiarity with personnel and project management concepts.
• Preferred Competencies
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, to synthesize complex technical and programmatic information into concise, actionable summaries for diverse audiences.
• Broad familiarity with numerous information technology disciplines.
• Excellent supervisory and staff management skills.
• Strong and effective oral and written communication skills.
• Outstanding leadership skills, bringing differing factions together to reach decisions in a timely manner in large­-scale fast-­moving projects.
• Facilitate technical discussions, as well as synthesize, summarize and generate insight from large amounts of complex data and information.
• Demonstrated skill in building consensus, mediating disagreements, and bringing disparate factions together toward shared decisions and outcomes.
• Relate business issues to technology and vice versa.
• Accurately monitor project progress, to keep track of effort and funds expended and committed, and anticipate at an early stage any need for changes in project direction, scope, objectives, funding, or timeline.
• Prioritize multiple projects and independently follow through with detail on general, and sometimes ambiguous, instructions for projects and deliverables.
• Working Conditions
• Primarily remote work, with occasional required attendance at in-person meetings.
• Occasional evening or weekend hours.
• Occasional travel to attend in-person project meetings and provide on-site support to project teams.