The Senior Director operates as an expert leader in the Department/Division, overseeing the Departmental Core Administrative team that manages all financial, personnel, space, and department operations with advanced leadership skills. This includes acting as the direct supervisor of the Senior Research Administration Manager, Business Office Personnel, and other senior upper management, guiding them on day-to-day operations and personnel matters.
As a mission-driven leader and trusted advisor to the Chair of the Department of Data Science, the Senior Director is responsible for departmental goal-setting, process improvement, and standard operating procedures, and for evaluating current workflows to ensure the highest quality, efficiency, and sustainability. The Senior Director integrates deep computational, clinical, and business knowledge to ensure the department’s infrastructure empowers faculty, staff, and trainees to advance data-driven solutions and innovation in cancer research.
Reporting directly to the Department Chair/Division Chief and indirectly to Research Leadership, this individual will act as a facilitator to Institute departments, cores, business entities, and external organizations/stakeholders to achieve key business objectives for the Department/Division and the overall Institute mission. The Senior Director provides strategic guidance to ensure alignment across operations, finance, research administration, personnel, facilities, communications, compliance, and academic events. This encompasses all reporting associated with their specific line of business and all personnel issues for both faculty and staff.
Located in Boston and the surrounding communities, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a leader in life changing breakthroughs in cancer research and patient care. We are united in our mission of conquering cancer, HIV/AIDS, and related diseases. We strive to create an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment where we provide compassionate and comprehensive care to patients of all backgrounds, and design programs to promote public health particularly among high-risk and underserved populations. We conduct groundbreaking research that advances treatment, we educate tomorrow's physician/researchers, and we work with amazing partners, including other Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospitals.
Finance
- Authorization and Oversight: Provide oversight and signing authority, ensuring comprehensive fiscal management aligns with donor intent and institutional policies at a higher level.
- Fund Management: Lead the management of diverse funding sources—including research grants, clinical trials, and computational resource allocations—ensuring alignment with institutional priorities and compliance.
- Deficit Oversight: Oversee the monitoring and projection of fund/program deficits, providing strategic financial insights to departmental and institutional leadership.
- Business Planning: Guide the development of comprehensive business plans for major funding lines, computing infrastructure investments, and strategic initiatives.
- Donor Relations: Partner with Philanthropy and Special Funds leadership to enhance donor relationships and optimize fund stewardship.
- Financial Reporting: Collaborate with senior Finance leaders to analyze and explain departmental profit and loss, providing operational insights to institute leadership.
- Budget Management: Oversee the preparation, forecasting, and strategic alignment of departmental budgets with institutional goals.
- Staff Training: Lead the development of training programs for administrative staff to enhance financial consultation capabilities and decision-making support.
- External Collaboration: Partner with external institutes to ensure effective management of shared faculty employment, joint funding, and collaborative research initiatives.
Human Resources
- Personnel Management: Provide oversight to ensure all aspects of personnel management (including hiring, onboarding, and offboarding) align with Institute policy and strategic goals.
- Complex Issue Resolution: Lead the resolution of complex personnel issues, working closely with senior HR leadership.
- Strategic Staffing: Ensure optimal staffing levels across all departmental lines of business to maintain high operational productivity.
- Appointments and Promotions Oversight: Lead the oversight of academic, research, and clinical appointments and promotions within the department.
- Faculty Recruitment Leadership: Manage high-priority faculty searches and appointments, ensuring alignment with institutional priorities.
- Performance Process Leadership: Provide oversight of the performance and annual evaluation process.
- Diversity Strategy: Lead initiatives to increase diversity in recruitment, collaborating directly with HR leaders.
- People Strategy Engagement: Engage with People Strategy Partners to influence workforce initiatives and computational talent retention.
- Performance and Development Strategy: Lead the development of strategies for performance improvement, continuous learning, and career development.
- Compliance Leadership: Ensure strict compliance with out-of-state employment laws for remote or cross-appointed computational staff.
- Well-being Strategy: Lead the promotion, assessment, and implementation of faculty and staff well-being initiatives.
- Organizational Communication: Serve as the primary strategic liaison for communicating HR-driven organizational changes.
- HRIS Strategic Collaboration: Lead strategic collaboration with HRIS on department HR structures, security roles, and system access.
General / Strategy
- Process Improvement: Lead strategic initiatives with Institute leadership to drive process, workflow, and quality improvements across the department.
- Advisory Role: Serve as a core strategic advisor and thought partner to the Department Chair on complex departmental, educational, and institutional priorities.
- Innovative Support Systems: Lead the assessment and implementation of innovative administrative, data tracking, and operational support systems.
- Policy Leadership: Propose, develop, and enforce department-wide administrative and operational policies and procedures.
- Space Planning: Oversee strategic short- and long-term departmental space planning, design, and relocations in close collaboration with leadership and facilities.
- Capital and Renovation Leadership: Lead the management of capital requests and provide strategic oversight for space renovations, computing clusters, and hardware footprints.
- Event Oversight: Provide oversight for high-profile symposia, research conferences, seminars, training, and educational activities.
- Communication Leadership: Lead internal and external departmental communications, website management, and branding initiatives.
- Project Leadership: Lead and advise on institute-level projects, driving the planning and implementation of new programs and services.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Interact with high-level stakeholders to influence and drive strategic business and research decisions.
- Growth Leadership: Identify and lead strategic growth opportunities, designing long-term initiatives to keep the department at the forefront of data science discovery.
Operations
- Process Optimization: Lead optimization of business processes, computational resource workflows, and data pipelines to drive institutional efficiency.
- Operational Leadership: Design and lead the execution of operational initiatives, aligning priorities for departmental excellence.
- Compliance Oversight: Provide high-level oversight of laboratory, office, and computational operations to ensure compliance with all institutional and environmental safety policies.
- Space Stewardship: Oversee global management of institutional space resources, ensuring effective and equitable stewardship.
- Inventory Management: Lead stewardship of supply inventory, technical assets, and foster collaboration for equipment/server sharing.
- Equipment Oversight: Ensure oversight of hardware maintenance, asset management, and user training to minimize infrastructure risk.
- Operational Planning: Proactively plan for personnel needs based on data surges, operational activities, and external factors.
- Clinical Operations Oversight: Provide strategic oversight of clinical operations and data trials, assessing their impact on patient flow, faculty well-being, and fellow efforts.
- Issue Resolution: Lead proactive measures to address and resolve complex operational roadblocks, enhancing efficiency and support for faculty and fellows.
Compliance
- Policy Leadership: Lead strategic enforcement of annual education requirements, Code of Conduct, immunization mandates, and HR policies on discrimination and harassment.
- Oversight of Misconduct Policies: Provide strategic oversight to ensure absolute compliance with scientific and academic misconduct policies.
- Data Security Leadership: Lead strategic enforcement of strict patient confidentiality, data use agreements (DUAs), and institutional data security policies.
- Collaboration and Escalation: Collaborate directly with HR and executive leadership, managing high-level compliance escalations effectively.
- Accreditation Strategy: Lead adherence to accreditation and compliance requirements within the ACGME-accredited Fellowship Program and computational education modules.
MINIMUM JOB QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s degree is preferred
- 15 years of experience in a related field required
- 5 years of people management experience required
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES REQUIRED:
- Advanced Computer Literacy: Leads strategic adoption of new applications, institutional databases, and software, with advanced expertise in Excel/Google Sheets, financial modeling, and familiarity with enterprise systems (e.g., PeopleSoft, Workday).
- Strategic Organization: Provides strategic oversight in electronic document management, prioritization, multitasking, and delegation, ensuring high levels of accuracy, timeliness, and attention to detail.
- Strategic Customer Service: Leads initiatives to enhance cross-departmental communication, query response, and proactive problem-solving across the department.
- Advanced Critical Thinking: Assesses complex, high-velocity situations, developing innovative solutions and ensuring compliance with regulations. Offers extensive experience analyzing grant data through the deep research, comprehension, and application of NIH and other federal, state, and foundation policies.
- Financial Leadership: Provides macro-level strategic oversight of budgeting, forecasting, and financial portfolio management, integrating complex, multi-million dollar awards and institutional investments.
- Collaboration: Leads strategic relationship-building efforts across the institute, building trust and enhancing multi-disciplinary teamwork.
- Operational Strategy: Guides strategic direction in departmental and clinical operations, ensuring total alignment with institutional regulations, standard operating procedures, and clinical data compliance.
- Project Leadership: Oversees multiple strategic workstreams simultaneously, successfully influencing stakeholders and driving major initiatives to completion.
- Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Leadership: Champions diversity and inclusion, fostering a high-performance environment that actively values human differences in recruitment and daily operations.
- Leadership: Professionally leads, mentors, and influences departmental and cross-institutional projects, resolving complex operational friction points and communicating strategically with executive leadership.
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Provide leadership, mentorship, and supervision to the Department of Data Science’s Business Office, Senior Research Administration Managers, and other senior employee groups, fostering a culture of excellence, professional growth, and psychological safety.
At Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, we work every day to create an innovative, caring, and inclusive environment where every patient, family, and staff member feels they belong. As relentless as we are in our mission to reduce the burden of cancer for all, we are committed to having faculty and staff who offer multifaceted experiences. Cancer knows no boundaries and when it comes to hiring the most dedicated and compassionate professionals, neither do we. If working in this kind of organization inspires you, we encourage you to apply.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is an equal opportunity employer and affirms the right of every qualified applicant to receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, national origin, sexual orientation, genetic information, disability, age, ancestry, military service, protected veteran status, or other characteristics protected by law.
.
Pay Transparency Statement
The hiring range is based on market pay structures, with individual salaries determined by factors such as business needs, market conditions, internal equity, and based on the candidate’s relevant experience, skills and qualifications.
For union positions, the pay range is determined by the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
$195,600.00 - $220,000.00
