Sr. Research Agreement & Budget Specialist

This includes supporting or leading agreement intake, budget development, FMV review, negotiation, amendment support, milestone and payment tracking, documentation management, stakeholder communication, and process improvement. The successful candidate will serve as a key liaison between Clinical Research, Legal, Finance, and external study sites, supporting the full lifecycle of research agreements, study budgets, and payment management.

This individual will leverage their clinical trial knowledge and project management skills to negotiate site budgets, develop study milestones, ensure fair market value alignment, manage research-related payments and invoicing, and help drive the successful execution of sponsored studies, registries, and real-world data initiatives.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Supports the lifecycle management of research agreements, including agreement requests, amendments, termination letters, confidentiality documents, supporting exhibits, milestone schedules, and related documentation.
• Develop, review, support, or negotiate research study budgets, payment schedules, milestone triggers, pass-through costs, overhead assumptions, and budget amendments according to role level.
• Review study documentation, including protocol requirements, schedules of events, approved funding details, GGC notes, product or loaner support, and roles-and-responsibilities documents, to support accurate agreement and budget content.
• Support or perform FMV assessments, benchmarking, cost justification, and documentation of budget assumptions.
• Coordinate with Legal, Finance, Compliance, Clinical Research, Study Management, Research Operations, sites, investigators, vendors, and other stakeholders to support timely agreement execution and payment administration.
• Track contract status, negotiation progress, milestones, payment obligations, amendments, and executed documents in applicable systems.

Discretion/Latitude

Operates with a high degree of autonomy and serves as a subject matter expert for complex agreements, budgets, FMV review, amendments, and financial oversight. Independently leads complex negotiations, recommends approaches for non-standard issues, mentors others, and develops tools, templates, and standards. Decisions influence portfolio-level practices, financial governance, compliance readiness, and process scalability.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex, high-value, multi-site, international, collaborative, or escalated agreement and budget negotiations.
• Serve as FMV, cost-justification, and budget-standardization SME.
• Review and approve or recommend budget assumptions, payment structures, and exception rationale.
• Analyze trends in budget requests, amendments, payment issues, and negotiation bottlenecks.
• Mentor team members and develop templates, tools, work instructions, and best practices.

Education, Experience

Bachelor’s degree plus 6 years of relevant experience required; or Master’s degree plus 5 years of relevant experience. Experience independently managing research agreement and budget negotiations, FMV documentation, cost justification, stakeholder escalation, and process improvement required.