Project Officer

QUT is hiring a Project Officer into its Office of Research Services, and the position closes on 9 November 2026 at 11.30pm Brisbane time. That is a fixed-term, full-time appointment based at Kelvin Grove with a hybrid option. The base salary runs from $94,084 to $101,872, which becomes $111,341 to $120,557 once 17 per cent superannuation and leave loading are added.

The job exists to keep externally funded research moving. If you read the position description cold, you will see phrases like project establishment, variations, reporting and stakeholder communication. What those words describe is the daily work of stopping a $400,000 grant from stalling because a contract has not been actioned or a milestone report has no owner.

Why this role sits at the centre of QUT's research machine

The Office of Research Services sits inside QUT's Research Portfolio, which the university describes as six units working under the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and two Pro Vice-Chancellors for Research and Research Infrastructure. ORS handles the full lifecycle of competitive grants, consultancies and commercial research engagements. It is the unit researchers call when an award letter arrives and someone has to turn it into an active project record.

QUT has climbed on research volume for a decade. The university describes its own trajectory as the strongest sustained research growth of any Australian university over the last ten years. That growth creates a practical problem: every new externally funded project needs a set of administrative actions, and each one has a compliance deadline attached.

What the Project Officer actually does

In ORS, the Project Officer reports to a Project Coordinator and works inside the team that administers externally funded contracts. The day-to-day responsibilities fall into four repetitive but high-stakes blocks.

• Establishing project records when a grant, consultancy or commercial research agreement is awarded.
• Actioning financial and reporting tasks, including variations and milestone reports.
• Advising researchers and professional staff on university policies and processes.
• Maintaining communication with internal and external stakeholders, often before a problem becomes visible.

A variation is a useful example. A chief investigator might need to move a postdoc's salary line, extend an end date, change a subcontractor, or shift the balance of a budget between categories. That request crosses several desks. The Project Officer drafts or reviews the variation, checks the funding body's rules, consults the relevant unit, and keeps the record accurate so the audit trail does not collapse later.

The university's External Research Funding Policy sets out the rules for review, approval and variations, and the officer is expected to work inside those rules without turning the process into a research barrier.

The role also requires keeping current knowledge of sector developments. Research funding rules shift; the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council change their guidelines regularly. An officer who last read the rules in 2024 will miss something in 2026.

The numbers behind the post

QUT reported $140.9 million in HERDC-eligible research income for 2024, up from $96.2 million in 2018, according to the university's own reporting and federal data. That is a 46 per cent increase in six years, faster than many comparable institutions.

In the 2024 annual report, QUT noted it secured more than $53 million in external funding for industry engagement projects and executed 14 intellectual property and commercialisation agreements. Each of those projects generates records that pass through ORS at some point.

The team structure tells its own story. Position descriptions from the Office of Research Services describe a Project Management Unit with a Team Leader, two Project Coordinators, a Senior Project Officer, eight Project Officers and two Project Support Officers. That is a finite number of people handling a rapidly growing book of externally funded work.

You can read the QUT Annual Report 2024 for the full financial picture.

Who can apply, and the eligibility rules you don't want to miss

The listing says the role is open to current QUT staff with unrestricted work rights in Australia for the duration of the fixed-term appointment. Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people who are not QUT staff are also eligible and encouraged to apply, in support of the university's Indigenous Australian employment strategy.

That first sentence matters more than it looks. Current staff who want a secondment into the role must obtain their supervisor's approval before submitting an application. If you skip that step, your application can be rejected on process grounds before it is read.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position. Unrestricted work rights are not negotiable. The fixed-term nature of the appointment means your right to work must cover the full period, not just the starting date.

If you are a researcher reading this, note the interaction: ORS depends on professional staff who understand research funding, but the eligibility is designed to create a pathway for internal mobility and, separately, for Indigenous Australian applicants outside the university. That is a deliberate choice, not an afterthought.

What a competitive application looks like

The selection criteria are specific, and the first read of them is a useful test. A degree in business or a related discipline with subsequent relevant experience is the entry point. Beyond that, the listing asks for proven experience in research funding management, including resolving complex funding issues, and high-level written communication for reports, variations and correspondence tailored to different audiences.

Do not treat these criteria as boilerplate. Address each one with a concrete example that names the scale and the outcome. Instead of writing that you administered research grants, write that you managed post-award variations and reporting for a $2.4 million multi-partner grant and cut average variation turnaround from nine days to four. The first reviewer works from a matrix; your examples need to map to the criteria exactly.

If you are preparing a CV for this kind of role, the guidance in our article on writing a winning academic CV is practical for addressing selection criteria line by line, though this role is professional staff rather than academic.

Digital literacy is stated as a plain requirement: Microsoft Office, electronic record management systems and other large corporate systems. That is not a courtesy line. You will be working in QUT's research management platform, finance systems and grant databases, often at the same time as a researcher who wants an answer right now.

What this means for your lab

Researchers don't apply for this job. Researchers depend on whoever gets it. A collaborator, call her Dr. K, once spent seven weeks trying to get a variation approved because a single form sat unactioned in a shared inbox. When the right project officer finally saw it, the whole thing was cleared in two days. The delay was not caused by a difficult policy; it was caused by a handoff with no owner.

The base rate is this: the more externally funded projects a university carries, the more the quality of research administration determines whether work actually happens. QUT's research income is up, the number of projects is up, and the ORS team is not scaling at the same rate. That is not criticism; it is arithmetic. A fixed team with more work per officer will either develop better systems or start dropping tasks.

For your lab, the practical lesson is to know which project officer owns which piece of your funding. When you get an award, find the name attached to the project record. When a variation is needed, contact that person directly and keep the request trail in the system. Do not assume the request is being handled because you filed it somewhere.

The application window is short and the time zone matters

The job opened on 26 October 2026 and closes on 9 November 2026 at 11.30pm. That is Australian Eastern Standard Time, because Brisbane does not observe daylight saving. If you are in a state that has moved to daylight saving, the deadline in your local clock will be different.

Submit through the QUT recruitment portal. The listing includes a position description and a preview of the application form. You will need a current CV, a cover letter addressing the selection criteria, and the details of referees who have watched you manage funded work. Do not wait until the last evening; the portal is not forgiving, and QUT is explicit about the 11.30pm cut-off.

The application link is on the QUT careers portal. If the link breaks, search QUT careers for reference number 26534.

Next step: open the position description, highlight three selection criteria you can evidence strongly, and draft one paragraph per criterion before you touch the application form. That is the difference between a submission that gets shortlisted and one that gets filed.