This senior leadership position plays a crucial role to ensure ICFO can attract and train outstanding international talent across all areas of operation, and fostering a culture where students, researchers and staff can grow professionally and thrive in an effective team environment.
**Position Overview**
ICFO is seeking a highly motivated and experienced leader for the role of **Vice-Director of People, Education and Culture**. As a member of the Executive Team, this position plays a pivotal role in shaping ICFO’s strategic direction in key areas: talent attraction, academic affairs, professional development & organizational culture, and operations management.
The Vice-Director will lead strategic teams responsible for:
- **Talent Attraction**: developing and implementing strategies to identify, attract, and recruit top-tier talent, aligning with the center’s mission and goals, fostering partnerships, enhancing reputation, and ensuring a diverse and skilled workforce to drive innovation and excellence in research.
- **Academic Affairs**: development and implementation of academic programs, policies, and partnerships to support the center’s research and educational objectives. This role ensures academic excellence, compliance with standards, and fosters collaboration among researchers, faculty, and external institutions.
- **Professional Development**: designs and implements initiatives to enhance the skills, knowledge, and career growth of the center’s staff and researchers, while ensuring the safety and well-being of all staff, and fostering continuous learning and talent development to support organizational and individual goals.
- **Organizational Culture**: promotes a positive, inclusive, and collaborative work environment aligned with the center’s values and purpose, focusing on cultural transformation, employee engagement, and fostering a sense of belonging to the ICFO community of current and former ICFOnians to enhance overall organizational performance.
- **Operations Management**: ensures the efficient and effective functioning of operational activities in support of ICFO’s 26 research teams, supporting ICFO’s Group and Team Leaders to optimizing resources, manage personnel and budgeting, comply with Responsible Research and Innovation, Research Data Management and Ethics requirements, coordinate events, visitors and travel, and act as internal liaison between Group / Team Leaders with ICFO’s management units.
**Key Responsibilities**
- **Strategic Leadership**: Develop and implement strategies and policies for talent attraction, education & professional development, and institutional culture that align with ICFO’s mission and long-term objectives.
- **Team Management**: Lead, mentor, and support teams reporting to the Vice-Director, fostering a collaborative and high-performing environment.
- **Recruitment**: Oversee initiatives to enhance the quality and diversity of talent at ICFO, to full the current and future needs of ICFO’s research groups and management teams.
- **Education**: Ensure that ICFO continues to position itself as a leading institution for graduate education and postdoctoral training benchmarked against leading European and international graduate schools.
- **People & Culture**: Oversee initiatives to enhance the professional development of all staff, students and researchers, promote effective team culture across the institute, and engagement with the ICFOnian community.
- **Operations**: ensure effective operations and resources management within ICFO’s research groups, effective communications between research groups and management units, and effective workflows, data management & automation across all areas of responsibility.
- **Grants & Partnerships**: Secure national and international grants to support recruitment, educational and training objectives, and build and maintain relationships with local and international academic partners to support strategic institutional recruitment, education and career development objectives.
**Why Join Us?**
At ICFO, you will have the opportunity to lead innovation and engagement at a globally renowned research institution. This role offers a platform to make a meaningful impact by transforming groundbreaking photonics research into solutions that benefit society. ICFO provides an intellectually stimulating and inclusive environment, dedicated to fostering professional growth and advancing the frontiers of science and technology.
ICFO is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
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**Requirements**:
**Qualifications and Experience**
- PhD in a relevant field of Science or Engineering.
- A minimum of 5 years of senior management experience in research-driven organizations.
- International experience in academic and/or research institutions.
- Experience in supervision of PhD stud