Research Contracts Officer

About the role

Randstad is recruiting a proven Research Contracts Officer for a prominent higher education partner in Melbourne. The role requires strong contractual acumen, meticulous attention to detail and the ability to build lasting stakeholder relationships in an agile, mission-driven academic environment. It is a full-time contractor position.

Key responsibilities

• Clear a peak year-end surge of strategic research and commercial funding agreements before the Christmas deadline, working with substantial autonomy.
• Draft, review, redline and negotiate a diverse portfolio of grant and commercial agreements, including collaborative research arrangements, contract research, sub-contracts, Co-operative Research Centres (CRCs), Centres of Excellence and intellectual property licensing deals.
• Manage clause-level terms and evaluate legal, financial and operational risks, especially around IP rights, warranties, indemnities and liability caps.
• Prepare formal risk recommendations for authorised delegates to execute agreements.

Required profile

• Substantial, hands-on experience reviewing, drafting and redlining commercial contracts at clause level (e.g. commercial lawyers, contract lawyers or dispute lawyers who moved into commercial drafting).
• Extensive experience reviewing, redlining and drafting complex, multi-party commercial and research agreements from scratch or bespoke client templates.
• Ability to propose creative alternative wording to resolve negotiation impasses between institutional policy and commercial counterparty demands.
• Direct familiarity with Australian research funding structures, including ARC grants, NHMRC, CRCs, Centres of Excellence and defence/government procurement guidelines.
• Available immediately.

Required skills

• Mastery of high-risk commercial clauses such as mutual vs. unilateral indemnities, liability caps, warranties, insurances, IP warranties, publication delays, dispute resolution and termination for convenience or default.
• Understanding of how background, project and third-party IP are allocated, licensed or commercialised in joint ventures and collaborative research.
• Balancing academic publication rights and student graduation dependencies against patent filing timelines and confidentiality obligations.
• Ability to maintain meticulous audit trails in contract management systems.