Overview As a Senior Contracts Administrator, you will manage complex NASA and commercial contracts from pre-award to closeout, ensuring compliance and strategic alignment. You'll partner with cross-functional teams to handle high visibility agreements and mitigate risk in a federally regulated environment. The role focuses on policy, governance, and process improvement to raise efficiency and contract integrity. You'll contribute to audits, inquiries, and governance initiatives, shaping how contracting supports STScI's mission in space science.
Responsibilities- Manage the full contract lifecycle for complex pre-award, award, post-award, renewal, modification, and closeout actions
- Analyze complex contractual requirements, flow-downs, deliverables, and obligations for compliance
- Lead administration of nonstandard, high-risk, or strategically significant contract actions
- Oversee compliance issues, coordinate with legal leadership, and escalate as needed
- Evaluate and mitigate contractual risk; document findings and propose corrective actions
- Develop and maintain SOPs, templates, and governance for contract management
- Establish standards for contract files, milestone tracking, renewal workflows, and records retention
- Provide guidance to contracts staff and stakeholders in federally regulated environments
- Support audits, internal reviews, and process assessments
- Serve as a senior resource to contracts staff, program management, procurement, finance, legal, and operations
Key requirements- 6+ years of progressively responsible experience in contract administration, subcontract administration, procurement, or government contracting
- Experience with complex agreements and issue resolution
- Knowledge of federal contracting frameworks, governance, and records management
- Ability to interpret complex contract language and provide actionable guidance
- Experience designing and improving SOPs, templates, and workflows
- Strong communication and cross-functional leadership skills
- Preferred: experience in federal contractor, aerospace, research, or higher education environments; NASA/FAR-based or flow-down compliance experience
- leadership
- analytical thinking
- clear written communication
- full contract lifecycle management
- FAR-based compliance
- flow-down provisions
