Program Specialist

Program Specialist

Appointment Type: Full-Time Temporary (FTT)

Location: Oak Ridge, TN or Remote (North Carolina or Maryland)

Salary Range: $20.92 - $27.98 per hour

Purpose: Coordinate and execute essential administrative functions to support educational fellowships and research experience programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal agencies under ORAU Government Services (OGS). Collaborate closely with team members, support staff, program managers, participants, and sponsors to ensure alignment with the sponsors’ mission and core values.

Program participants may include U.S. citizens or foreign nationals with diverse educational backgrounds, ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to recent Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. graduates, as well as university faculty and senior scientists in STEM. Candidates must have prior experience supporting DoD programs.

• Serve as the primary point of contact for program applicants, participants, laboratory representatives, cooperative agreement managers, and other key personnel identified by the sponsor.
• Continuously monitor multiple sources of communication (phone, individual email, and assigned group email accounts) ensuring timely responses.
• Field inquiries concerning all current, previous, or potential appointments and opportunity announcements; assess the nature of the inquiry and collaborate with internal and external contacts to successfully resolve matters, elevating to program manager as appropriate.
• Provide administrative support to and for program managers.
• Execute a multitude of administrative tasks supporting program participants.
• Collect, verify, and accurately maintain data from various sources relevant to applicants, participants, and sponsors.
• Ensure appointments comply with all policies, requirements, regulations, and quality standards of ORAU and the sponsor.
• Assist program sponsors and applicants with navigating Zintellect, SAP Concur, and SharePoint.
• Must be familiar with, or able to quickly master, the following systems and software:
• Zintellect
• ORACLE / Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)
• SAP Concur
• Adobe Acrobat
• Microsoft Office Suite – Outlook, Excel, Word, Teams, and Share Point
• Assist sponsors with preparing and publishing research opportunity announcements.
• Screen applicants to ensure compliance for program eligibility.
• Prepare applicant summary packages for qualified candidates and submit them to the sponsor for evaluation.

High school diploma and 2 to 4 years of job‑related experience. Higher level education above minimum may count for additional experience.

• As an administrative staff member for research participant programs, the selected candidate must be experienced or have the ability to quickly achieve competency in several areas including:
• Must be self‑directed and capable of processing and prioritizing multiple tasks and handling a large and varied workload with minimum supervision.
• Appointment procedures for program participants in a variety of programs including application processes, appointment letters (originals and revisions), inbound/outbound moves, visas, payment reimbursements, stipend batching, on‑station travel, and onboarding/exiting. Able to problem‑solve in these areas, as needed.
• Communication with various parties including applicants, participants, mentors, administrators, ORAU staff and support staff to successfully facilitate appointment details. Communication includes drafting informal and formal communications to stakeholders and resolving issues as they arise with minimal supervision.
• Issue resolution and demonstrated problem‑solving skills. Able to discern when to escalate an issue to a project manager.
• Data requirements and reporting procedures associated with program participants, in general and specific, to various sponsors.
• ORACLE duties related to the human resource module, expenditure batch entry, and payables and expenditure inquiry.
• Knowledge of participant programs as required to represent OGS at meetings, conferences, and campus visits.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, organizational, grammatical, and…