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Posting Reason:

New Position

Job Type:

Employee

Anticipated Duration in Months (for contracts and temporary assignments):

12

Job Family:

Research and Program Support

# of Open Positions:

1

Faculty/Service - Department:

CRC - The Human and Policy Dimensions of Climate Change

Campus:

Main Campus

Union Affiliation:

N/A

Date Posted (YYYY/MM/DD):

2026/09/24

Applications must be received BEFORE (YYYY/MM/DD):

2026/10/05

Hours per week:

35

Salary Grade:

Non-Union Grade NMR1

Salary Range:

$107,503.00 - $134,379.00

The Dawson Lab & uOttawa Arctic Research Hub

The University of Ottawa’s Environment, Society and Policy Group (the Dawson Lab) is seeking a Research Manager to lead its interdisciplinary Arctic research portfolio. Reporting to Lab Director Jackie Dawson, you’ll oversee major projects on climate change, sea ice, shipping and northern communities; supervise and mentor postdocs and research staff; manage reporting, ethics and field logistics; and help build new proposals and partnerships with academic, government and Indigenous collaborators. We’re looking for someone with a Master’s or PhD (or equivalent experience), 5+ years in research or project management, strong scientific writing skills, and fluency in English and French; Arctic experience and work with Inuit or Indigenous partners are strong assets. We offer competitive salary, professional development, language training and a collaborative team tackling one of the defining environmental and geopolitical challenges of our time.

Position Purpose:

Manages, supervises and controls all scientific, financial and operational aspects of major laboratory conducting multiple concurrent research projects or of a specialized facility providing analytical, equipment access or advisory services to a range of internal and external clients. The incumbent ensures that these laboratories and facilities operate effectively and efficiently as a state-of-the art, internationally recognized, research and analytical facilities.

In this role, your responsibilities will include:

Leadership

• Oversees the overall operation and administration of a major laboratory conducting multiple concurrent research projects or of a specialized facility providing analytical, equipment access or advisory services to a range of internal and external clients.
• Creates and implements all strategies, policies, procedures and best practices needed to support the optimal performance of a laboratory or facility.
Plans, develops, organizes, implements, and directs the organization's laboratory or facility operations and evaluates performance.

Laboratory and Operations Management

• Manages, administers and implements all research grants and contracts being conducted within the laboratory or facility.
• Oversees the operation of the laboratory or facility’s equipment.
• Establishes operations standards for cost control, waste reduction, quality, safety, and on-time performance of research or analytical deliverables.
• Collects, maintains, and manages statistics on equipment utilization to facilitate the most time-efficient, productive and fair use of the laboratory’s equipment. Advises Principal Investigator of developing trends and emerging needs.
Oversees the operation of the laboratory’s transaction processing (accepting, tracking and billing orders), equipment scheduling, financial / accounting and inventory control systems.

Financial Management

• Manages the laboratory’s budget, including collection of user fees.
• Ensures that expenditures are properly attributed to research grant and contract accounts, with appropriate documentation and justification as may be required.
• Participates in the development and implementation of operational budgets to ensure that salaries, equipment maintenance, repairs and upgrades, etc. requirements are met.
• Assists in the preparation of internal and external funding proposals to ensure appropriate cost recovery and revenues.
Participates in detailed cost analyses to ensure fair and competitive prices to users.

Personnel Management

• Manages laboratory personnel and authorized equipment users to optimize equipment utilization while assuring timely completion of deliverables.
• Interviews, hires, trains, and supervises laboratory personnel.
• Ensures that personnel are competent to perform analytical procedures, and record and to report test results promptly and accurately.
Promotes collaboration and teamwork.

Scientific Management

• Performs sophisticated, specialized, non-routine, quantitative and qualitative analyses for clients, laboratory staff and students.
• Provides expert advice to users (professors, post-docs and students) on their respective projects re: proper sampling, analytical, instrumental, calibration and method limitations to obtain the best data possible.
• Supervises, instructs and demonstrates analysis techniques to laboratory staff.
• Develops novel tests and methods, and ensures that these provide high quality laboratory services for all aspects of test performance, including the pre-analytic, sample preparation, analytic, and post-analytic phases of testing.
• Formulates, plans and develops innovations to increase the efficiency, productivity, accessibility and adaptability of the laboratory and its instrumentation including the development of new analytical capabilities relating to the varied research needs of the scientific community.
• Ensures that analytical protocols are properly implemented and executed by laboratory staff, students and authorized users. Implements quality control and quality assurance programs as necessary.
• Ensures that all data and analytical results are maintained in a satisfactory manner.
Resolves problems by consulting with peers, Principal Investigators and others in the broader scientific community.

Infrastructure Management

• Oversees or executes installations, maintenance, diagnosis, repairs and modifications to the laboratory or facility equipment to assure high quality, cost-effective service.
• Procures all supporting equipment, parts and services required for the efficient and effective operation of the Facility as a state-of-the-art research and educational service.
• Oversees the laboratory’s or facility’s computational and information resources, to assure current instrumentation software operate on trouble-free secured computers and provide lab personnel with a protected and secured database for data manipulation and storage.
• Ensures that the physical plant and environment conditions of the laboratory are appropriate for the equipment portfolio and testing performed.
Maintains data and reports on physical condition and equipment inventory of the facility.

Regulatory Management

• Establishes and enforces security and safety protocols regarding Occupational Health and Safety codes to provide a safe and pleasant work environment.
Ensures adherence to all applicable regulatory requirements, including those applying to human and animal subjects, hazardous materials, radiation, controlled goods, etc., all technical and operational staff, students and authorized equipment users.

Customer Service and Stakeholder Liaison

• Ensures highest quality research and analytical service standards thereby assuring client satisfaction.
• Establishes and maintains lines of communication with internal and external customers in order to assure high quality client interaction and service.
• Works collaboratively with scientists on projects that lead to journal publications, presentations at professional meetings, and reports that influence project progression.
• Promotes the University of Ottawa and the laboratory / facility inside and outside the University through training courses, talks, conferences, and the Lab brochure and website to attract new users/projects at the University and international levels.
Solicits business from external users to generate revenue for the Facility.

• Keeps abreast of all modern analytical techniques by reading the current literature, participating in related scientific conferences, meetings and workshops as a representative of the University of Ottawa. This knowledge is to be transmitted to the Facility users and used to implement novel techniques within the laboratory / facility in order to maintain a state-of-the-art Facility and solve demanding research problems.
Any other related duties required by the research projects or management of the research laboratory or analytical facility.
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What you will bring:

• Ph.D. in a relevant discipline and at least five to seven years of practical experience as a senior researcher.
• Extensive experience in research and /or analytical laboratory management.
• Comprehensive knowledge of the physical principles governing the laboratory’s collection of analytical instrumentation.
• Deep familiarity with relevant analytical methodology and research instrumentation, including methodological development and validation. Extensive experience in handling highly sophisticated analytical instrumentation.
• Excellent technical skills, analytical ability, judgment with a strong operational focus.
• Demonstrated organizational skills.
• Excellent communications skills.
• Excellent interpersonal, technical, scientific and communications skills (written/oral).
• Ability to manage teams and people.
• Advanced written and verbal skills in English or French. Bilingualism, spoken and written, is preferred.

Key Competencies at uOttawa:
Here are the required competencies for all or our employees at uOttawa:

Planning: Organize in time a series of actions or events in order to realize an objective or a project. Plan and organize own work and priorities in regular daily activities.
Initiative: Demonstrate creativity and initiative to suggest improvements and encourage positive results. Is proactive and self-starting. Show availability and willingness to go above and beyond whenever it is possible.
Client Service Orientation: Help or serve others to meet their needs. This implies anticipating and identifying the needs of internal and external clients and finding solutions on how to meet them.
Teamwork and Cooperation: Cooperate and work well with other members of the team to reach common goal(s). Accept and give constructive feedback. Able to adjust own behaviour to reach the goals of the team.

The University of Ottawa embraces diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are passionate about our people and committed to employment equity. We foster a culture of respect, teamwork and inclusion, where collaboration, innovation, and creativity fuel our quest for research and teaching excellence. While all qualified persons are invited to apply, we welcome applications from qualified Indigenous persons, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, women and LGBTQIA2S+ persons. The University is committed to creating and maintaining an accessible, barrier-free work environment. The University is also committed to working with applicants with disabilities requesting accommodation during the recruitment, assessment and selection processes. Applicants with disabilities may contact hrtalentmanagement@uottawa.ca to communicate the accommodation need. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Note: if this is a union position: The hiring process will be governed by the current collective agreement related to the union affiliation noted above; you can click here to find out more.

If this is a front-line position with responsibilities to interact with students, selected candidates must be rated at the Low Advanced proficiency level or higher for both oral comprehension and reading comprehension in their second official language. The rating is determined by a proficiency test designed by the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute.

Prior to May 1, 2022, the University required all students, faculty, staff, and visitors (including contractors) to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as defined in Policy 129 – Covid-19 Vaccination. This policy was suspended effective May 1, 2022 but may be reinstated at any point in the future depending on public health guidelines and the recommendations of experts.