Contracts Manager

Join our dynamic team at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), where your expertise in Finance meets our mission to protect, maintain, and improve the health of all Minnesotans!

This position exists to provide direction and strategic oversight of outgoing Professional/Technical (P/T) contracts required for MDH to achieve its mission, goals, strategies, plans, and work objectives.  This position ensures sound development and implementation of P/T contract standards, policies and procedures, high level overview, and facilitates the use of data analytics to identify continuous improvement opportunities across the agency.  This role has a strong focus on relationship management, customer engagement, process improvements, change management, documentation, and implementation.

Working as a Contracts Manager you will:

• Manage, direct, and coordinate the oversight of department P/T contract activities (P/T contracts, Annual Plan Agreements, Joint Powers Agreements, Interagency Agreements, Income Agreements, P/T Master Contracts and Work Orders), so that appropriate policies and procedures are in place and followed.
• Communicate policies, procedures, forms, significant changes to contracts to all MDH through collaboration, meetings, documents, trainings, job aids, other resources, verbally and through presentations.
• Supervise the staff of the Contracts Office to ensure responsibilities are performed in a professional manner, the activities are coordinated and integrated whenever possible, work is assigned, schedules are met, and supervision is provided to ensure conformance with labor agreements, department policies, and management principles.
• Actively represent MDH at the Enterprise level to build an effective working relationship with the Office of State Procurement, Office of Equity in Procurement, and other state agencies so that MDH can identify and implement opportunities to provide consistent, streamlined, and effective contract development and management process.
• Direct the execution of the Department's contracts and related documents assuring compliance with state and federal laws, statewide policies, and MDH policies.
• Direct contract/grant execution and encumbrance activities and oversee reporting and compliance systems for coordinating with agency programs to manage open encumbrances and to facilitate the preparation of the annual certification report.
• Direct the coordination, development and monitoring of MDH's Annual Plan to assure department adherence with specific plan components authorized by Delegation of Authority.
• In coordination with the Grants Office, the General Counsel's Office and MNIT; develop, implement, and maintain and MDH contract information system so that all contracts can be monitored for status, and reporting requirements can be tracked by preparing ad-hoc reports as requested to internal and external customers of MDH.
• Participate in and/or lead decision-making for division, bureau, and agency issues.
• Perform other tasks and responsibilities as required or assigned so that projects, assignments, or other requirements are accomplished by established deadlines and within the scope of the assignment.

This is a hybrid telework position that may require in-person meetings and in-office work in the downtown St. Paul location. Telework will be based on the business needs of the unit and is at supervisory discretion.

Minimum Qualifications

Four (4) years of experience in managing, directing or coordination of contract processes. This experience must include:

• Demonstrated leadership experience sufficient to manage and/or lead complex projects.
• Ability to prepare complete, comprehensive reports, often under tight timelines.

Minimum qualifications to be assessed during the interview process:

• Strong human relation skills, with the ability to relate to others both within and outside of an organization/agency.
• Ability to communicate verbally and in writing sufficient to provide information about contract management policies and procedures to the team.
• Knowledge of general accounting procedures and experience with budgeting procedures.
• Innovative problem-solving skills with ability to quickly integrate information from a variety of sources, identify positive and negative impacts, understand the influences of internal and external factors, and design and analyze alternative contracts management policy.

Preferred Qualifications

• Extensive technical knowledge of the State of Minnesota's contracting processes.
• Extensive knowledge and experience using the Statewide Integrated Financial Tools (SWIFT).

Additional Requirements

This position requires successful completion of a background check and employment reference check.