King's College London

About us

The School of Neuroscience is UK’s 2nd largest Neuroscience school with over 500 researcher and 200 PhD students. It is one of three schools at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience. We are ranked 4th in the world for the total number of publications in neuroscience, 4th for the number of publication outputs in top 5% citations in neuroscience, and 4th for top 5% citations in neurology.

Our academic and research staff are integral to our school. Their work is supported by a group of Professional Services staff members within the departments as well as at the school level. We support staff members requiring flexible working arrangements and reasonable adjustments. Upon consultation at the points of recruitment and onboarding, we will strive to provide the best adjustments for you.

We strongly encourage our staff to dedicate time to their professional development through training courses and participation in working groups and networks. We also encourage our staff to seek mentoring outside their direct line management. Mentoring, both via formal and informal arrangements, allows individuals to fully explore their career situation and development. Our weekly school circular regularly captures and promotes opportunities open to all staff 

About the role

The Senior Research Support Officer is based within the School of Neuroscience and will primarily provide high-level research administration support to two departments: Basic and Clinical Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, on the Denmark Hill campus.

The role holder will work closely with researchers to manage the end-to-end grant lifecycle and is responsible for overseeing and actioning pre- and post-award processes to ensure awards are managed in accordance with funder and University policies.  

The role would suite someone who has significant experience within research grant administration, with good attention to detail, able to effectively manage their time and is able to build and maintain effective working relationships across the School, Faculty and University.

The role will provide individuals with a wide variety of experience and skills working across research administration in a large and complex School and Faculty, supporting the individual to progress their career within research administration across the University.

The post is hybrid with an expectation of 3 days per week on campus.

This is a full time role and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Strong knowledge and skills of research support acquired through relevant posts, demonstrating development through progressively more demanding work/roles.
2.  Working knowledge and experience of grant management processes, systems, budget monitoring, HR processes, software, and regulations.
3. Experience of Worktribe, Unit4 Business World and PeopleXD or other university equivalents. 
4. Proficient levels of numeracy and experience of budget management and costings.
5. 5Relevant working experience of using Excel, Word and other Microsoft applications (e.g., SharePoint).
6. Effective communication and interpersonal skills in order to receive, understand and relay complicated ideas or information to various groups of all levels.
7. Effective at working independently, and as part of a team, able to take own initiative & decisions with minimal supervision.
8. Exceptional organisational skills with an in-depth knowledge of a range of practices, methods and procedures to deliver effective and efficient support.

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of managing staff, giving feedback on performance levels and providing training/coaching. 

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

As part of this commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and through this appointment process, it is our aim to develop candidate pools that include applicants from all backgrounds and communities.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.