Research Technology Solutions Lead

WHY UT SOUTHWESTERN?
With over 75 years of excellence in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, UT Southwestern is committed to excellence, innovation, teamwork, and compassion. As a world-renowned medical and research center, we strive to provide the best possible care, resources, and benefits for our valued employees. Ranked as the number 1 hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth according to U.S. News & World Report , we invest in you with opportunities for career growth and development to align with your future goals. Our highly competitive benefits package offers healthcare, PTO and paid holidays, on-site childcare, wage, merit increases and so much more. We invite you to be a part of the UT Southwestern team where you'll discover a culture of teamwork, professionalism, and a rewarding career!

JOB SUMMARY
The Research Technology Solutions Lead will play a key role in advancing Research as a Service (RaaS) at UT Southwestern. This position serves as the bridge between faculty, research teams, compliance offices, and IT, ensuring research needs are translated into secure, scalable, and compliant technology solutions. The ideal candidate brings strong analytical skills, a deep understanding of research data workflows, and the ability to align technology capabilities (cloud, data, AI and analytics) with institutional research priorities. Please note, this position does not support H1B visa sponsorship.

BENEFITS
UT Southwestern is proud to offer a competitive and comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees. Our benefits are designed to support your overall wellbeing, and include:

• PPO medical plan, available day one at no cost for full-time employee-only coverage
• 100% coverage for preventive healthcare-no copay
• Paid Time Off, available day one
• Retirement Programs through the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS)
• Paid Parental Leave Benefit
• Wellness programs
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Qualified Employer
• Learn more about these and other UTSW employee benefits!

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

Required

• Education
  Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, or other related fields

• Experience
  5 years business systems and/or project experience with exposure to systems or project development and testing, installation, and training.
  May consider additional years of related experience in lieu of degree.
• Preferred
  • Experience: Minimum 5-7 years as a Business Analyst in IT, Research Computing, or Research Administration environments.
  • Preferred Knowledge/Skills:
  • Familiarity with cloud research environments (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform) including secure enclaves and high-performance computing.
  • Experience working with IRB, Compliance, Information Security, and Data Governance teams.
  • Understanding of genomic, imaging, or clinical research data and associated privacy/security requirements.
  • Knowledge of data lifecycle and documentation practices (metadata, DOIs) that support compliance, reproducibility, and long-term research data stewardship.
  • Proficiency in Agile delivery practices, process mapping, requirements elicitation, and stakeholder facilitation.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate between technical and non-technical audiences
• Role Responsibilities

Stakeholder liaison:

• Serve as the primary liaison and bridge between faculty/PIs, labs, core facilities, IRB/Compliance, and IR technical teams.
• Translate institutional research priorities into an actionable RaaS roadmap and service catalog (secure enclaves, cognitive services (AI), storage, data pipelines, analytics, software services).
  
  Intake & scoping:
• Lead Intake, scoping, and triage of research IT requests.
• Elicit requirements (functional/non-functional), size effort.
• Align with RaaS offerings (secure enclaves, cognitive services, storage, compute, data services).

AI Tools & Services Intake workflow:

• Operate a clear request path (form/portal), SLA-based triage, and queue management.
• Route to security, legal, privacy, accessibility, and architecture reviews.
• Convert needs into user stories, acceptance criteria, and a prioritized backlog.
• Maintain traceability to institutional goals.

Process & Solution Design

• Map current/future-state processes for proposal data acquisition compute analysis publish/archive.
• Design RaaS workflows (e.g., secure enclave requests, data onboarding, access provisioning, de-provisioning).
• Partner with solution architects to evaluate alternatives (build/buy, cloud-native vs. on-prem, managed services) and quantify value/risk.

Data, Integrations & Platforms

• Define and document data flows, system interfaces, and integration points across enterprise and research systems.
• Specify and coordinate data needs in partnership with IR-Enterprise Data Systems.
• Support data lifecycle management policies (ingest active cold archive), cost models, and tagging/chargeback where applicable.
• Partner with Enterprise Data and Information Security teams to ensure solutions adhere to research data classifications, PHI/PII handling, genomic data protections, and export control requirements.
• Understand research data security frameworks (e.g., NIST 800-171, FISMA, HIPAA, NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy) and their implications for data storage and enclave design.
• Understand requirements related to Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) registration, persistent identifiers, and metadata standards for research outputs.

Delivery Support & Quality

• Define test strategy and UAT plans; validate that solutions meet acceptance criteria and regulatory standards.
• Track dependencies, risks, and issues; drive mitigation/escalation paths with PMs and technical leads.
• Coordinate cutover/readiness, go-live checklists, and post-implementation validation.

Change Management & Adoption

• Develop role-based training, quick-start guides, and knowledge-base articles for researchers and staff.

JOB DUTIES

• Manages projects and serves as primary customer contact. Defines and maintains project plan and schedules. Monitors compliance with definitions of project scope, timelines, and deliverables. Provides regular project status reports to customer and internal management. Assists business analysts of lower grade to coordinate projects.
• Collects, interprets and documents specifications required to develop new and revise existing software applications. Develops and implements operational plans for new and existing business computer applications. Participates in development of project proposals for customers.
• Coordinates testing of new applications and changes to existing applications to ensure integrity and quality of data while providing and/or assisting in training of system users. Defines and develops test scenarios. Documents and tracks status of application errors and related issues in problem log. Assist programmers and business analysts of lower grade in analyzing and resolving problems.
• Compiles complete, concise, and comprehensive policies and operation procedures to assist in communicating issues to applicable management staff.
• Develops new system administrative procedures required utilizing new functionality resulting from system changes.
• Assists in developing and implementing business strategies in departments to improve operational processing and productivity.
• Monitors development of specifications and establishes priorities for accomplishing design and testing of various projects.
• Reviews, develops, recommends, and implements activities, programs or functions as assigned.
• Maintains and tracks accounts assigned to projects or programs. Develops and maintains project plans. Provides project status reports.
• Records time spent on projects to meet cost-recovery requirements.
• May supervise lower level analysts.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

SECURITY AND EEO STATEMENT

Security
This position is security-sensitive and subject to Texas Education Code 51.215, which authorizes UT Southwestern to obtain criminal history record information. To the extent this position requires the holder to research, work on, or have access to critical infrastructure as defined in Section 117.001(2) of the Texas Business and Commerce Code, the ability to maintain the security or integrity of the critical infrastructure is a minimum qualification to be hired and to continue to be employed in the position.

EEO
UT Southwestern Medical Center is committed to an educational and working environment that provides equal opportunity to all members of the University community. As an equal opportunity employer, UT Southwestern prohibits unlawful discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, or veteran status.