Project Administrator
| Posting date: | 27 August 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £34,982 to £40,855 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 15 September 2025 |
| Location: | Oxford, Oxfordshire |
| Remote working: | Hybrid - work remotely up to 2 days per week |
| Company: | HESTIA, Oxford Martin School |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: |
Summary
We are seeking a Project Administrator to support our research project, HESTIA (https://hestia.earth). HESTIA is the main output of the Oxford Martin Programme on Food Sustainability. We are part of the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. We also have team members at Leiden University and at the NGO WRAP. HESTIA provides key parts of the scientific and digital infrastructure to enable food’s environmental impacts to be quantified, communicated, and reduced. We make everything we do free, open source, and open access, creating a transparent and public resource to underpin a global transition to sustainable food. We currently have data describing around 150,000 farms on the platform, we work with around 50 partner organisations worldwide, we have a growing team of around 20 people, split into data, software, and field work. Your role will focus on providing administrative support to the entire project (see responsibilities below). You will primarily work with the project lead, Dr. Joseph Poore, but also support other team members from an administrative perspective.
About HESTIA
HESTIA provides key parts of the scientific and digital infrastructure to enable food’s environmental impacts to be quantified, communicated, and reduced. We make everything we do free, open source, and open access, creating a transparent and public resource to underpin a global transition to sustainable food. We are relied upon by researchers, policymakers, NGOs, and companies for:
- Our data platform, which is the world’s largest archive of free and harmonized data describing over 100k farms worldwide, contributed by 20 of the world’s main agricultural research organisations.
- Our benchmark data, which currently includes profiles of typical production of 70 crops in 40 countries, representing ~40% of global production.
- Our calculation tools, available via our open API, which are being used by food companies and researchers for calculations on data from ~2-4 million farming cycles. We have over 800 environmental impact models coded up which calculate environmental impacts including biodiversity loss, water use, ecological toxicity, and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Our data format, which is the only open-source data structure for harmonizing agrienvironmental data. It is forming the basis of policy in the UK, enabling export of data from farm calculators, and enabling supply chain data sharing.
HESTIA was initiated with core funding from WWF, and subsequently with funding from the Login5 Foundation. We have additional project-based funding support from WWF, Defra, INRAE, Horizon, BBSRC, the EU, Azura, Ardevora Charitable Trust, and have had funding from the Wellcome Trust.
Responsibilities
- Project financial management: Creating project costings; tracking spend against project budgets; approving invoices in line with budgets and delivery; administering central project expenses including project card reconciliations; drafting financial contracts (e.g., for freelancers, external service providers); creating purchase orders on Oracle; providing financial reports to funders for each of our projects; engaging effectively with the Biology grants and post-award teams.
- Event organisation: Organising team meetings and external partner meetings.
- Internships: Supporting us to generally have 2-3 interns on our team over the summer, and 1-2 over Christmas/Easter. Work on advertising the roles and onboarding the interns.
- Recruitment: Supporting with the recruitment and onboarding process for any new hires.
- Training: Taking a role in ensuring the team’s training needs are met, in discussion with them and their line managers, and identifying new training opportunities for the team.
- Compliance and legal: Ensuring that any contracts we have to receive and share data are accurate; ensuring all team members have completed all relevant training; and ensuring the overall team is up to date and on track in line with University and funder policies.
- Funder reporting: Supporting team members to report to our funders on progress against project deliverables.
- Fundraising support: Prospecting and identifying opportunities; proposal support; engaging with the development office; potentially funder engagement.
- Ad-hoc admin support: Other duties such as supporting with conference material printing, booking travel to conferences, business card printing, etc.
- Comms support: From Year 2, supporting with the administrative components of project communications, including maintaining the LinkedIn page, managing the backlog of blog posts, organising videos, and engaging with the OMS and Biology comms teams.
- In the future, potentially taking an increasing role in project management and working towards the role of operating officer for the project.
- Embed the principles of mutual respect, equality, diversity, inclusivity and sustainability in all aspects of your work; undertake training as and when asked to do so.
Essential Selection Criteria
- Very strong attention to detail.
- Strong numeracy skills.
- Excellent organisational skills, including prioritising workloads and turning around work efficiently and accurately.
- Good spoken and written communication skills.
- Ability to interact effectively with team members including senior and junior researchers, and with a broad range of contacts from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities.
- Ability to work independently, using personal initiative and judgement, and as a member of a team.
- Working knowledge of Excel.
- An interest in food security and agriculture
About HESTIA
HESTIA provides key parts of the scientific and digital infrastructure to enable food’s environmental impacts to be quantified, communicated, and reduced. We make everything we do free, open source, and open access, creating a transparent and public resource to underpin a global transition to sustainable food. We are relied upon by researchers, policymakers, NGOs, and companies for:
- Our data platform, which is the world’s largest archive of free and harmonized data describing over 100k farms worldwide, contributed by 20 of the world’s main agricultural research organisations.
- Our benchmark data, which currently includes profiles of typical production of 70 crops in 40 countries, representing ~40% of global production.
- Our calculation tools, available via our open API, which are being used by food companies and researchers for calculations on data from ~2-4 million farming cycles. We have over 800 environmental impact models coded up which calculate environmental impacts including biodiversity loss, water use, ecological toxicity, and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Our data format, which is the only open-source data structure for harmonizing agrienvironmental data. It is forming the basis of policy in the UK, enabling export of data from farm calculators, and enabling supply chain data sharing.
HESTIA was initiated with core funding from WWF, and subsequently with funding from the Login5 Foundation. We have additional project-based funding support from WWF, Defra, INRAE, Horizon, BBSRC, the EU, Azura, Ardevora Charitable Trust, and have had funding from the Wellcome Trust.
Responsibilities
- Project financial management: Creating project costings; tracking spend against project budgets; approving invoices in line with budgets and delivery; administering central project expenses including project card reconciliations; drafting financial contracts (e.g., for freelancers, external service providers); creating purchase orders on Oracle; providing financial reports to funders for each of our projects; engaging effectively with the Biology grants and post-award teams.
- Event organisation: Organising team meetings and external partner meetings.
- Internships: Supporting us to generally have 2-3 interns on our team over the summer, and 1-2 over Christmas/Easter. Work on advertising the roles and onboarding the interns.
- Recruitment: Supporting with the recruitment and onboarding process for any new hires.
- Training: Taking a role in ensuring the team’s training needs are met, in discussion with them and their line managers, and identifying new training opportunities for the team.
- Compliance and legal: Ensuring that any contracts we have to receive and share data are accurate; ensuring all team members have completed all relevant training; and ensuring the overall team is up to date and on track in line with University and funder policies.
- Funder reporting: Supporting team members to report to our funders on progress against project deliverables.
- Fundraising support: Prospecting and identifying opportunities; proposal support; engaging with the development office; potentially funder engagement.
- Ad-hoc admin support: Other duties such as supporting with conference material printing, booking travel to conferences, business card printing, etc.
- Comms support: From Year 2, supporting with the administrative components of project communications, including maintaining the LinkedIn page, managing the backlog of blog posts, organising videos, and engaging with the OMS and Biology comms teams.
- In the future, potentially taking an increasing role in project management and working towards the role of operating officer for the project.
- Embed the principles of mutual respect, equality, diversity, inclusivity and sustainability in all aspects of your work; undertake training as and when asked to do so.
Essential Selection Criteria
- Very strong attention to detail.
- Strong numeracy skills.
- Excellent organisational skills, including prioritising workloads and turning around work efficiently and accurately.
- Good spoken and written communication skills.
- Ability to interact effectively with team members including senior and junior researchers, and with a broad range of contacts from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities.
- Ability to work independently, using personal initiative and judgement, and as a member of a team.
- Working knowledge of Excel.
- An interest in food security and agriculture