Grants & Economic Development Program Manager

LSI is seeking a Grants & Economic Development Program Manager to support clients across the full lifecycle of grant-funded initiatives, from opportunity identification and pursuit through award implementation, program management, reporting, and closeout. 

This is a client-facing role supporting organizations across the United States. The successful candidate will combine grant lifecycle expertise with strong program management, consulting, and client leadership skills. This role requires someone who develops a deep understanding of client objectives, proactively identifies opportunities and productive next steps, and creates momentum rather than waiting for work to be assigned. 

While grants and economic development will be the primary focus, LSI supports a diverse portfolio of government, industry, and professional-services engagements. The successful candidate must be comfortable applying transferable program-management skills to other client initiatives, quickly learning unfamiliar environments, and coordinating appropriate subject matter experts when needed. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Serve as a primary point of contact and trusted advisor for assigned client engagements, developing a strong understanding of client objectives, challenges, stakeholders, and programmatic needs. 

• Proactively drive client activity by identifying opportunities, recommending next steps, developing forward-looking work plans, and identifying productive activities within existing scopes of work. 

• Identify and evaluate federal, state, local, foundation, and other funding opportunities aligned with client priorities, including eligibility, strategic fit, competitiveness, resource requirements, and implementation risk. 

• Interpret Notices of Funding Opportunity, Requests for Applications, solicitations, and agency guidance and effectively present recommended opportunities to client leadership. 

• Lead or coordinate development of competitive grant applications, including proposal strategy, schedules, program concepts, implementation approaches, budgets, performance measures, and supporting documentation. 

• Coordinate clients, LSI resources, subject matter experts, partners, government stakeholders, and other contributors throughout pursuit and program delivery. 

• Help clients transition successful awards into execution by establishing implementation plans, schedules, responsibilities, operating cadences, performance measures, and reporting expectations. 

• Provide ongoing program management support, maintaining visibility into scope, schedule, budget, milestones, deliverables, risks, and performance commitments. 

• Support clients in meeting grant and contractual reporting, compliance, performance measurement, modification, and closeout requirements. 

• Facilitate client meetings, workshops, capability briefings, program reviews, and stakeholder sessions. 

• Apply program-management and client-engagement capabilities to other LSI client programs when needed, bringing structure and accountability to complex or unfamiliar initiatives. 

• Identify emerging client needs and opportunities where additional LSI capabilities may provide value and coordinate those opportunities with Business Development leadership. 

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience. 

• Demonstrated experience across multiple stages of the grant lifecycle, including opportunity identification, grant development, award implementation, program management, reporting, or closeout. 

• Program or project management experience coordinating people, schedules, deliverables, milestones, risks, and stakeholder expectations. 

• Experience directly managing client, customer, government, partner, or other external stakeholder relationships. 

• Demonstrated ability to proactively manage client engagements, identify needs, develop recommendations, and drive activity without relying solely on client-generated assignments. 

• Ability to translate complex or ambiguous requirements into structured plans and actionable recommendations. 

• Strong written, verbal, facilitation, presentation, and client communication skills. 

• Ability to manage multiple concurrent client engagements and quickly develop working knowledge of unfamiliar programs or subject areas. 

• Ability and willingness to travel regularly throughout the United States. 

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in grants, economic development, government programs, consulting, program management, government contracting, or a related field. 

• Experience developing competitive federal or state grant applications and managing grant-funded programs following award. 

• Experience in economic development, workforce development, small-business assistance, entrepreneurship, innovation, technology commercialization, defense industrial base development, or related initiatives. 

• Experience managing multiple client accounts or professional-services engagements. 

• Familiarity with federal grant compliance, reporting, performance measurement, and program evaluation. 

• Project or program management certification or equivalent demonstrated experience. 

Travel Requirements 

LSI supports clients throughout the United States, and this position requires regular domestic travel for client meetings, program kickoffs, stakeholder workshops, capability briefings, site visits, program reviews, and other engagement activities. Travel frequency will vary based on client and program needs.