Allied Health-Laboratories | Job Family Group

These roles involve the study and analysis of tissues at the microscopic level to diagnose diseases, research medical conditions, and understand biological processes. Prepare, stain, and examine tissue samples, providing critical insights that support clinical diagnoses and scientific research.

These roles focus on performing a range of operational activities in support of laboratory testing, including managing lab equipment, ensuring proper safety protocols, and supporting research and experiments.  Responsible for maintaining lab functionality and efficiency.

These roles are responsible for preparing and analyzing tissue samples, blood tests, and other specimens to assist in diagnosing diseases and conducting research. May work with academic research and/or clinical services within the university’s medical or research centers.

These roles are responsible for drawing blood from patients, students, or research participants for medical tests, donations, or research studies. Phlebotomists ensure accurate collection, proper labeling, and safe handling of blood samples in compliance with laboratory and safety standards. Professionals in this field may specialize in drawing blood for tests, transfusions, donations, or research.

These roles are responsible for several key areas of student services, providing comprehensive support throughout the student lifecycle. These positions are designed to offer a broad range of services, which may include admissions, financial aid, academic advising, registration, student engagement, and other essential functions that enhance the student experience.

The Operations and Service career stream includes individuals who provide essential administrative and clerical support to keep the organization running smoothly. Most of their time is dedicated to delivering support services or completing specific tasks, often under supervision. These roles are vital to maintaining daily operations and ensuring organizational efficiency.

The Professional career stream includes individuals who specialize in a specific discipline or field. They focus on designing, implementing, and delivering processes, programs, and policies. Drawing on advanced expertise—usually gained through higher education—they dedicate most of their time to applying specialized knowledge to create impactful solutions.

The Management career stream includes individuals who lead teams and drive results within their areas of responsibility. They hold personnel decision-making authority and spend most of their time guiding their teams to achieve goals. This leadership is exercised through both direct and indirect reports across functions or departments.

The Senior Administrator career stream includes individuals who provide strategic and administrative leadership across schools, units, or departments. They create and implement plans aligned with institutional goals and often address complex, wide-reaching challenges. These roles require strong collaboration with senior and executive leaders across the organization.

The Executive career stream includes the University’s top leadership roles. These are single-incumbent positions responsible for setting the strategic vision and direction of a major, enterprise-wide area of impact. Drawing on broad institutional knowledge and deep leadership experience, they focus on guiding long-term priorities, aligning operations with mission, and ensuring sustainable success across the organization.

A career stream is a category in the Career Journeys Job Framework that describes the general type of responsibilities a position has. It reflects the nature of the work—such as professional, clinical, operational, managerial, or executive—and helps clarify the kind of contribution the role makes to the University. Career streams, combined with job families, help employees understand how their work fits into the organization and identify potential paths for growth, whether within the same stream or by moving to another.

Career Streams in Career Journeys Job Framework Include:

• Professional
• Management
• Operations and Service 
• Clinical Professional
• Clinical Technician 
• Senior Administrator
• Executive
• Athletics
   

Yes — you can move from one career stream to another if your job responsibilities change and align with the new stream.

For example, someone in the Operations and Service stream could move into the Professional stream by gaining the necessary education, training, or experience, or into the Management stream by taking on people-leadership responsibilities. Career streams aren’t fixed for life—they’re a way of describing your current role, not limiting your future opportunities

No — you don’t have to become a manager to reach the top of your career stream.

In Career Journeys, each stream has its own progression path. For example, in the Professional or Clinical Professional streams, you can advance in roles in a higher "level" that carry significant increases in influence, responsibility, and compensation without managing people.

Management is just one type of career stream, not the “top” of all streams. You can build a high-level career without shifting into people leadership—unless that’s the direction you want to go.

Levels reflect the typical knowledge, skills, and experience needed for roles at that stage. Within a career stream, several different jobs may share the same level, and not every level will always have an active position in every stream.

The differences between career levels are determined based on the scope/complexity of the position. Specifically, this means the jobs within a job family will differ in level based on duty and responsibility differences between profiles.  Factors include the nature and scope of influence, the level of autonomy the position has to make decisions at various levels of impact, the nature of communication and audience, supervisory responsibilities and number/type of teams, and the level of expertise needed to fulfill position responsibilities. 

Yes — you can move to a different job family group or job family if you apply for and are selected for a position in that area.

For example:

• You might move from the Information Technology job family group into Finance if you gain relevant skills or education and are hired into a finance role.

• Or you could shift from the Digital Media job family to Graphic Design within the Communications job family group if your work focus changes.

It’s not an automatic change — it happens when your role and responsibilities align with the requirements of the new job family group or job family, and you successfully secure that position through UVA’s traditional hiring process.

If most of a position’s responsibilities fall within one functional area, the position is assigned to the matching job family group or job family. If the work is more evenly spread across different areas, the job family group or job family is chosen based on which set of duties would be most important to highlight when recruiting for the role.

• Business Title is how you present your role day-to-day.
• Job Profile is how UVA classifies your role within the Job Framework for consistency and career planning.

Faculty and student positions are not included in the Career Journeys Job Framework. However, they still receive a unique job profile and can use Career Journeys to explore jobs that are part of the framework.

Other positions not included are: Classified Staff, Temporary Employees, Professional Research Staff, Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs), Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), Student Workers, Residents and House Staff, UVA Physicians Group, and UVA Community Health.

To be classified in the management stream, a job’s main focus needs to be leading people. In most cases, this means supervising at least two team members and overseeing a distinct department as a core part of the role.

We welcome all employees to take some time to explore the Career Journeys Job Framework and get familiar with its key concepts before requesting more information or changes to their job profile. For example, it is good to know that your job profile title may not always match the business title you use every day, and supervising one employee does not automatically place a role in the management stream before reaching out.

You can learn more about your job profile and how it relates to other roles by reviewing the Job Framework resources on this page and on the training webpage. If, after doing so, you’d still like to know more about your classification, please email askhr@virginia.edu with a brief description of your questions and any relevant details. Our HR team will review your message and connect you with the right person to guide you through the next steps for understanding—or, if appropriate, reevaluating—your job profile.

If you have more questions, there are plenty of resources to help. Your manager is a great first stop, and you can also email HR for assistance. If your questions are about your personal career path, consider scheduling a meeting with Career Navigation.

Explore your Career Journeys details and jobs in your Job Family

Whether you want to learn how to use the Dashboard or navigate the Job Directory, create a new Job Requisition, or understand how Career Journeys affects specific operations in your area, this page serves as your go-to guide.

Ready to explore your path?