Head of Strategy and Planning

Salary: £84,080

Role duration: Permanent (37.5 hours per week)

Location: London, UK (Hybrid – 50% office attendance)

Summary – what you will be achieving

The Head of Strategy and Planning provides organisation-wide leadership on strategic thinking, prioritisation, and planning. The role is responsible for developing and maintaining the Academy’s strategic framework and planning processes, ensuring that strategic ambitions are clear, evidence‑based, affordable, and deliverable. Working in close partnership with the Chief Operating Officer and senior leaders, the postholder supports the organisation to make informed choices, manage trade‑offs, and focus resources where they will have the greatest impact. The role does not hold responsibility for day‑to‑day operations, but instead enables effective delivery through strong planning, insight, and performance frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Direction
  • Lead the development and stewardship of a bold, coherent strategy that positions AMS as an influential voice across both UK and global medical science.
  • Design and embed organisation‑wide strategic and business planning processes, enabling clear prioritisation, coordinated action and disciplined alignment across all directorates.
  • Integrate domestic and international priorities seamlessly into the Academy’s strategic framework, ensuring AMS shapes – and is shaped by – both UK and global developments.
  • Facilitate high‑quality strategic conversations with senior leaders, bringing structure, creativity, evidence and options to complex organisational decisions.
• Whole‑System Partnerships, Influence and Strategic Engagement
  • Build and nurture influential partnerships across the entire health, science, research and innovation ecosystem, including government, funders, industry, academia, learned societies, the NHS, international bodies and philanthropic organisations.
  • Maintain a deep, organisation‑wide understanding of the Academy’s stakeholder landscape, ensuring strategic clarity about who our key partners are, what they value, and how AMS can work with them most effectively.
  • Enhance AMS’s role as a convener and connector, identifying opportunities for cross‑sector collaboration, joint influence and shared system impact across the UK and globally.
  • Act as a visible strategic ambassador, representing AMS’s priorities externally and ensuring strategic intelligence flows back into organisational decision‑making.
• Governance Leadership and Strategic Decision Infrastructure
  • Oversee all governance functions for the Academy, ensuring that Council and its committees are supported to operate effectively, efficiently and strategically.
  • Ensure the right business goes to Council at the right time, leading your team to manage forward plans, agenda setting, and the sequencing of decisions so that governance bodies can provide true strategic oversight.
  • Oversee the preparation of high‑quality papers and briefings that support rigorous, insight‑driven decision‑making by Council, committees and the Executive.
  • Strengthen governance as a strategic asset, ensuring that Board and committee structures, cycles and information flows enable clarity, accountability and long‑term organisational stewardship.
• Planning
  • Lead a high‑performing planning function that provides cross‑Academy visibility, assurance and coordination of major strategic programmes.
  • Embed consistent project, programme and portfolio management standards, ensuring strategic work is well‑sequenced, risk‑managed and aligned to organisational priorities.
  • Produce insightful, action‑oriented reporting for the Executive and Council that supports confident oversight and timely decision‑making.
• Strategic Funding and Resource Alignment
  • Build strategic relationships with current and potential funders, identifying where aligned investment can accelerate AMS’s mission and shared system goals.
  • Secure funding, shaping compelling, strategic propositions that reflect both organisational priorities and funder interests.
  • Work closely with Finance and Fundraising to ensure strategic plans are supported by sustainable income models and clear long‑term financial assumptions.
  • Identify funding gaps, capacity constraints and resourcing risks, enabling informed choices by the Executive and Council.
• Horizon Scanning, Foresight & External Context
  • Monitor and interpret major external developments – scientific, policy, geopolitical, funding, regulatory and technological – across the UK and internationally.
  • Ensure the Academy’s strategy is globally informed and forward‑looking, enabling AMS to anticipate change, seize emerging opportunities and mitigate strategic risks.
  • Translate horizon scanning into actionable strategic insight, equipping leaders and governance bodies with the intelligence needed to steer the organisation confidently.
• Leadership, Organisational Alignment and Executive Support
  • Lead and develop your team, ensuring strategic planning, international insight, planning, governance support and the CEO’s office operate as a cohesive, high‑performing unit.
  • Act as a strategic partner to directors and colleagues across the Academy, supporting alignment across directorates while preserving operational accountability.
  • Champion strategic discipline, prioritisation and organisational focus, ensuring the Academy remains aligned around the work that matters most.

Qualifications

• Strategic leader with substantial experience setting organisational direction and running effective strategic and business planning.
• Proven ability to build influential external partnerships across government, funders, industry, academia, NHS bodies and international organisations, acting as a credible ambassador and convener.
• Skilled at governance and decision‑making support, including shaping agendas, preparing high‑quality papers and enabling effective Board/committee oversight.
• Strong analytical judgement, able to synthesise complex evidence, assess risk and present clear strategic options.
• Experience overseeing planning or programme functions, ensuring aligned, well‑sequenced and risk‑managed delivery.
• Financially literate, with the ability to align resources with strategic priorities and engage funders.
• Excellent communicator and collaborator, able to influence senior leaders and lead high‑performing teams.

Benefits

We offer a competitive and evolving benefits package designed to support your wellbeing, development and work‑life balance, including:

• Competitive salary and pension
• 26 days’ annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Option to buy or sell annual leave
• Additional paid closure between Christmas and New Year
• Hybrid and flexible working
• Health, wellbeing and employee support programmes
• Cycle‑to‑work scheme and everyday benefits
• Structured learning and development
• Enhanced maternity, adoption and paternity leave
• Enhanced occupational sick pay.

A range of enhanced benefits become available once you’ve completed your probation period.