Protect our Land, Ascend with Us!

ASCENSION is seeking an experienced Purchase Card Program Manager / Senior Manager to lead contractor support for a high-volume federal Government Purchase Card compliance, oversight, and program administration environment supporting the National Institutes of Health.

The ideal candidate combines the discipline of an audit/compliance manager with the operational leadership of a federal program manager. This individual should understand how Government Purchase Card transactions are reviewed, how regulatory and agency requirements translate into compliance testing procedures, how questionable transactions are identified through data analytics, and how findings must be documented, communicated, corrected, and reported.

This is not simply a project scheduling role. The successful candidate will be expected to manage a team responsible for evaluating purchase-card activity across a program serving approximately 950 Cardholders, 500 Card Approving Officials, and 30 NIH Institutes and Centers, with approximately 27,000 purchase-card transactions per month. The individual must be comfortable supervising compliance reviews, reviewing workpapers, interpreting federal acquisition and purchase-card requirements, working with transaction data, presenting findings to Government officials, and maintaining rigorous quality standards.

We are looking for someone who is highly organized, analytically minded, tactful when communicating compliance findings, comfortable operating with limited supervision, and capable of managing simultaneous review cycles, deadlines, corrective-action follow-up, reporting requirements, and Government stakeholder expectations.

Position Summary

The Purchase Card Program Manager / Senior Manager will provide day-to-day management, quality control, technical oversight, and client coordination for ASCENSION’s support to the NIH Government Purchase Card Program.

The Program Manager will oversee activities associated with purchase-card transaction monitoring, targeted transaction reviews, Cardholder and Card Approving Official file reviews, data mining and risk analysis, policy and procedure support, training development, special reviews, monthly and annual reporting, and stakeholder briefings.

The position will serve as a primary contractor interface with the NIH Purchase Card Program Manager, Agency/Organization Program Coordinator (A/OPC), Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR), and other designated NIH stakeholders. The individual will ensure contractor personnel consistently apply NIH business rules and applicable Government Purchase Card requirements, maintain appropriate documentation, meet established review timelines, protect Government information, and promptly escalate compliance, schedule, quality, and operational risks.

A critical element of the position is translating transaction data into actionable compliance oversight. NIH requires review of 100 percent of purchase-card transactions through data mining, business rules, trends, and risk indicators to identify transactions warranting further examination. The Program Manager will therefore need enough analytical understanding to oversee the review methodology, challenge findings, recognize anomalies, and ensure that conclusions are evidence-based and defensible.

Key Responsibilities and Day-to-Day Activities

The Purchase Card Program Manager / Senior Manager will:

• Lead day-to-day execution of the NIH Purchase Card Program support task order, ensuring contractor activities remain aligned with scope, schedule, quality requirements, and Government priorities.
• Supervise contractor staff conducting targeted transaction reviews, comprehensive Government Purchase Card file reviews, data analysis, documentation reviews, policy support, training support, and reporting.
• Coordinate directly with the NIH Purchase Card Program Manager, COR, A/OPC, and other Government stakeholders regarding workload, priorities, schedules, findings, emerging risks, and required Government decisions.
• Develop and maintain integrated schedules for transaction reviews, Cardholder/Card Approving Official reviews, reporting requirements, meetings, policy updates, training activities, and other recurring deliverables.
• Oversee the analysis of approximately 27,000 monthly purchase-card transactions using Government-provided data, NIH business rules, transaction trends, regulatory requirements, and contractor-developed risk indicators.
• Ensure the team applies a risk-based methodology for identifying suspicious, unusual, potentially noncompliant, or otherwise high-risk transactions requiring additional review.
• Review data-mining methodologies, business rules, sampling approaches, findings, supporting documentation, and recommendations before submission to NIH.
• Coordinate quarterly reviews and updates of purchase-card business rules with Government representatives.
• Manage targeted transaction review activities, including notification, documentation requests, analysis, follow-up, findings development, and final review correspondence.
• Ensure targeted review reports are prepared within applicable NIH-established timelines, including the 45-calendar-day reporting standard identified in the SOW.
• Plan annual Government Purchase Card file reviews using a risk-based approach covering the required population of Cardholders and Card Approving Officials.
• Coordinate review schedules with NIH before Cardholders, Card Approving Officials, and Institute/Center Purchase Card Coordinators are formally scheduled.
• Facilitate entrance conferences, exit briefings, Institute/Center debriefings, status meetings, and other compliance-related discussions.
• Review workpapers and supporting evidence to ensure compliance conclusions are complete, consistent, traceable, objective, and supported by documentation.
• Evaluate findings involving procurement procedures, delegations of authority, receipt and acceptance, documentation, record retention, agency policy, and other applicable purchase-card controls.
• Monitor corrective actions and follow-up reviews for previously identified noncompliance.
• Maintain rigorous quality-control procedures for review files, reports, briefing materials, correspondence, schedules, and other deliverables.
• Track open findings, outstanding documentation requests, Government dependencies, corrective actions, and overdue items through structured management tools.
• Prepare monthly activity reports summarizing data-mining activities, targeted reviews, file-review status, review statistics, support activities, disputes, outstanding issues, and links to supporting Government repositories.
• Develop the annual purchase-card activity report summarizing activity and trends across NIH’s 30 Institutes and Centers and providing evidence-based recommendations.
• Analyze recurring findings and transaction patterns to identify systemic weaknesses, emerging compliance risks, training needs, or opportunities to strengthen program controls.
• Support NIH with annual updates to purchase-card policies, guidelines, supplements, desk procedures, and related program documentation.
• Monitor changes to applicable federal and departmental guidance and assess potential impact to NIH purchase-card procedures and review protocols.
• Oversee updates to annual Government Purchase Card refresher training and other training materials for Cardholders, Card Approving Officials, and Institute/Center Purchase Card Coordinators.
• Support development and delivery of specialized purchase-card training responding to compliance trends, policy changes, or emerging program risks.
• Prepare executive-level presentations, dashboards, briefing materials, review summaries, and talking points for monthly Purchase Card Coordinator meetings and other Government meetings.
• Coordinate special reviews, convenience-check analyses, disputed-transaction support, data calls, and other ad hoc assignments.
• Support preparation of Government responses to inquiries from entities such as OMB, GAO, GSA, HHS, OIG, and NIH internal oversight organizations when requested.
• Maintain Government information and review documentation in authorized repositories such as SharePoint, Government shared drives, Outlook, and other approved NIH systems.
• Enforce personnel onboarding, suitability, information-security training, Rules of Behavior, nondisclosure, records-management, and information-protection requirements across the contractor team.
• Escalate significant compliance findings, security concerns, schedule risks, resource constraints, or performance issues promptly to ASCENSION leadership and designated Government officials.
• Mentor consultants and analysts to promote consistent application of review methodologies, Government Purchase Card requirements, quality-control standards, and professional judgment.
• Recommend process improvements, automation opportunities, analytic rules, templates, dashboards, and management controls that strengthen program oversight without compromising Government-established procedures.