Hybrid Administrative Coordinator

Title: Administrative Coordinator
Pay Rate: $40/hr
Job Type: 1-month contract
Duration: Mar Apr 2025
Shift(s): Mon Fri, 9am 5pm
Location: Palo Alto, CA 94305
Hybrid, On-site 3 days/week including Mon

Job Code: JPC-10918 / 1396408

Tekberry is looking for a highly qualified and motivated individual to work with our client, a world-class university and research center. As a full-time* W2 employee you will have access to health benefits. Benefits include health, dental, and vision (eligible on the 1st of the month following your start date).

Job Description:

Reporting to the Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM) Associate Director, with a dotted-line reporting structure to approximately seven faculty appointed across the Departments of Materials Science & Engineering, Physics, and Applied Physics, the Administrative Coordinator (Administrative Associate 3) will support a highly-ambitious and -active portfolio of experimental research groups, including ~7 faculty, ~5 staff scientists, ~20 postdocs, ~50 graduate students, ~5 undergraduate and high school interns, and external faculty-level visitors.

This position will provide administrative support services to ensure that researchers are able to focus their time on research excellence and collaboration, which will regularly involve processing a large quantity of financial transactions, scheduling travel and meetings with diplomacy, conducting advanced budget plans and accounting analyses, troubleshooting policy and communications transactions, planning special academic and social events, and contributing to complex procurement and programming activities within the larger GLAM organization. The Administrative Coordinator is a meaningful contributor to GLAM's ever-evolving identity as an interdisciplinary unifier and incubator.

CORE DUTIES:

Faculty Administrative Support (70%)

• Serve as the first and primary administrative point of contact for researchers (faculty, staff scientists, postdocs, students, interns, and visitors) within assigned lab groups; projects include procurement, travel and meeting scheduling, appointment processing, space management, and academic event planning. Save faculty time, reduce the cost of doing research, and optimize efficiency in how faculty navigate a large, complex, and decentralized university.
• Route questions, concerns, and general information from researchers across GLAM and the university, including requests for fixes and improvements to GLAM's physical spaces, needs for procurement within GLAM's sponsored projects and/or general operations, rebudgets and cost policy analysis via federal and non-federal sponsored projects, desk reassignments
• Troubleshooting appointments and HR transactions, and a heterogeneous variety of other tasks associated with GLAM facilities and administration. Track the ebb and flow of information to ensure that all affected parties are sufficiently knowledgeable about timelines and that they feel fully supported.
• Compose and draft documents and correspondence for presentations, course handouts, grants, conferences, seminars, and reports; perform substantial editing and fact checking. Create, maintain, modify, and/or ensure accuracy of content in various unit documents, displays, reports, brochures, social media, and/or websites.
• Coordinate travel plans and itineraries for faculty, postdocs, and students in a manner that promotes the best use of time and minimizes potential travel issues.
• Work with the Manager and Senior Coordinator of Academic Affairs, ensure each group member's timely appointment and correct labor schedule for optimal Payroll and HR support.
• Schedule faculty calendars for meetings, which will involve confidential communications with internal and external constituents with varying degrees of complexity and sensitivity.

Procurement, Accounting & Data Analysis (10%)

• Process financial transactions, including reimbursement requests, Purchasing Card (Pcard) and Travel Card (Tcard) expenses, Purchase Order initiation, fund and expense transfers, and other financial processes. This position will be the cardholder and custodian for the assigned research groups' Pcards and Tcards, and must keep abreast of all university and federal policies pertaining to permissible expenses, timely reconciliation, and confidentiality.
• Support faculty in distributing postdoc and student salaries and other support across available financial accounts, ensuring that existing and prospective group members can be supported in the current year and in as-needed subsequent years of their term. Working closely with the Manager and Senior Coordinator of Academic Affairs, prepare various financial and student affairs documents to process each appointment and gather requisite university-level approvals.
• Maintain, reconcile, review, combine, and validate financial data sets and accounts, utilizing financial reports, financial databases, and key financial information.
• Run and analyze financial reports as directed by faculty and/or GLAM leadership, often from multiple systems, and complete data assimilation, clean-up, and reformatting work to ensure that finalized reports fully align with requests.
• Service GLAM's office appliances, order supplies (coffee beans, teas, holding containers, pens, paper towels, cups, etc.), and maintain an ongoing and ever-complex inventory of shared operational supplies. Conceptualize new policies and communications designed to enable equitable sharing of GLAM's common areas, and recommend small and large improvements to the Associate Director and peer colleagues.
• Serve as GLAM's primary point-of-contact for maintenance across the McCullough Building. Oversee contract management and compliance with timely payment, troubleshoot hardware issues as reported by GLAM community members, and make recommendations to the Associate Director for general improvement.

Event Planning, Policy Communications & Special Projects (20%)

• Coordinate, organize, and manage complex academic conferences and seminars, including procuring vendor services; attendee accommodations, oversee distribution of print and digital materials, organize and manage logistics, and manage events within budget. Report progress and post-event outcomes to faculty and administrative leadership, and proactively relay operational recommendations to continuously improve upon existing programs to increase the utility for and positive impact to researchers.
• Serve as one of GLAM's primary repositories for knowledge about the full spectrum of university procurement policies, including the appropriate and best methods for procurement (e.g. purchase orders, credit cards, reimbursements), travel, and distributing prospective costs across sponsored and non-sponsored accounts. Working closely with the Associate Director, Assistant Director of Research & Finance, and Senior Grants Manager, navigate financial policies as-needed and draft simple communications to orient and inform the full GLAM community about financial best practices.
• Co-administer GLAM's Inclusion Committee focused on facilitating community dialogue across the axes of intersectional identity and anti-bias regarding people and generally-accepted operating procedures. As directed by the Committee members, plan and execute events, draft communications documents, prepare agendas and other briefing information, and project manage tasks to overall completion and success.
• Continuously analyze and critique existing financial policies implemented by GLAM and the larger university, and work closely and diplomatically with the Associate Director in collaborating with the appropriate policy-guardians in potentially changing policies and/or developing work-around solutions that are in the best interest of GLAM and its researchers.
• Serve as GLAM's primary point-of-contact for the Sustainability Office to coordinate waste and recycling programs, experiment with new environmental initiatives, and communicate opportunities for energy conservation and community service. In general, support GLAM in its current and potential future efforts to reduce its environmental impact and conserve natural resources.

Requirements:

• High school diploma and four years of administrative experience, or combination of education and relevant experience.
• Strong preference for previous university experience, including Ofweb (for reimbursements, expense reports, Pcard reconciliation)
• Knowledge about financial processes and generally-accepted accounting procedures. Special preference for candidates with existing knowledge of university-specific financial systems, notably Oracle and FFIT.
• Strong organizational skills, including comfort with learning and deploying new and emerging technologies for project management, data analysis/reporting, and general collaboration and team communication.
• Firm commitment to keeping privileged or sensitive information in confidence.
• Demonstrated ability to earn and maintain trust from faculty, trainees, staff, and university leadership in navigating complex, complicated, and often unforeseen situations. Ability to cultivate strong collaborative relationships with faculty, with the eagerness and diplomacy required to anticipate faculty needs and save faculty time.
• At minimum, a knowledge about and sensitivity regarding fostering a culture of inclusion, and general understanding about how a history of inequity and how unexamined personal biases contribute to uneven workforce development. A credible commitment to inclusion, empathy, and community is essential for success in this role.
• A credible commitment to a "growth mindset," professional development, self-reflection, and collaborative communications.
• Ability to routinely and independently exercise sound judgment in making decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate respectfully, both orally and in writing.
• Ability to effectively communicate new ideas, future operating models, and approaches to work.
• Unrelenting optimism and a deep-rooted motivation towards operational excellence, fix problems, and work with diverse stakeholders to achieve a common goal.
• Exceptional diplomacy, grace under pressure, and the unwavering motivation to solve problems and resolve conflicts.

TEKBERRY OFFERS A REWARD FOR REFERRALS!

Tekberry, Inc. a Soal Technologies company, is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other protected categories under all applicable laws.

Tekberry, Inc is a Certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) and Certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE).

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