Administrative and Professional Job Descriptions

Harvard’s administrative and professional staff play critical roles in supporting all aspects of the enterprise by creating and managing the administrative infrastructure and providing professional expertise across a diverse range of job functions, from research and academic administration to athletics, communications, finance, alumni affairs and development, and more.

To support greater understanding of career paths for staff at the professional and managerial levels – for both current and prospective employees – we are developing a Job Framework. The Framework encompasses a set of standards for each Job Function, including core job descriptions, titles, and levels. The Job Framework consists of:

• Job Functions: Major areas of recognized professional expertise and practice in industry or in higher education, such as finance, IT, faculty and student services, and research. Within Job Functions, there are Job Families that represent sub-functions or sub-specialties.
• Job Families: A grouping of similar, related jobs within a Job Function. People in these jobs perform the same kind of work and require different levels of skills and responsibility as they advance from entry- to senior level positions. For instance, within the Finance Job Function, there are families (or sub-functions) like auditing, accounting, and financial planning and analysis.
• Job Description: Core duties and responsibilities, level of skill, experience, and education required for a job (along with the salary grade). The job description serves as the basis for hiring, and for establishing performance goals and development plans once an employee is on the job.
• Matrix of jobs: The matrix displays the relative position of various kinds and levels of professional and managerial positions within a job family.