Commercialisation Manager (Health and Life Sciences) in Sheffield

The University of Sheffield is a remarkable place to work. Our people are at the heart of everything we do. Their diverse backgrounds, abilities and beliefs make Sheffield a world-class university.

We offer a fantastic range of benefits including a highly competitive annual leave entitlement, a generous pensions scheme, flexible working opportunities, a commitment to your development and wellbeing, a wide range of retail discounts, and much more.

Overview: RPI supports University, Faculty and School priorities for research and innovation: income generation, research excellence, PGR experience, partnership development and knowledge exchange leading to income, impact and commercialisation of IP. Our focus is on delivering professional, value-add advice and support to the academic community.

You will be an essential part of delivering our Commercialisation Journey, a high-quality programme designed to empower researchers to explore the commercial potential of their work and potentially create spin-out companies, intellectual property licences or social enterprises. You will be key to the University's strategy, contributing to job creation, impactful research, and regional economic growth.

Main duties and responsibilities:

• Provide guidance, training, coaching & mentorship to innovators embarking on the Commercialisation Journey.
• Deliver Commercialisation Journey training to individual teams and cohorts.
• Maintain and develop training materials in collaboration with other team members.
• Develop and utilise commercial and technical knowledge to support innovators to translate their research discoveries into value propositions with market fit.
• Encourage innovators to undertake high quality market research and discovery and to critically assess their ideas.
• Support commercial negotiations relating to IP-licences, investment terms and shareholder rights while drawing on the experience of internal and external professional services.
• Be accountable for maintaining accurate records in internal databases and systems for the purposes of project management and annual reporting.
• Support innovators to secure internal and external funding and monitor deployment of internal funding.
• Complete project due diligence with respect to IP-ownership, historic funding, third party rights and regulatory compliance under the approval/guidance of senior staff.
• Proactively identify and recommend potential improvements to the Commercialisation Journey and collaborate with the commercialisation team to create new content.
• Support innovators through external pre-accelerator and accelerator programmes.
• Promote and market The Commercialisation Journey as a mechanism for delivering impact from academic research.
• Support our partnership with Northern Gritstone by establishing and maintaining a strong relationship with investment directors and other staff.

Person Specification:

• Clear enthusiasm for commercialisation of academic research outputs and a motivation to build new products and services.
• Experience of undertaking health and/or life sciences research, preferably to postgraduate (or equivalent) level.
• Evidenced ability to prioritise, plan and progress work activities across a diverse project portfolio with competing pressures and demands.
• Ability to conduct independent research (technical, market, commercial) to inform a position or decision making process.
• An appreciation of the methods used in identifying and securing intellectual property rights.
• Examples of using initiative and taking ownership of tasks.
• A proven track record of delivering engaging and informative training programs.
• Previous experience of developing technology-rich products within a start-up, spinout or larger business (desirable).
• Experience of using market discovery methods to successfully identify and adapt value propositions, preferably based on new technologies (desirable).
• Experience of reading, reviewing or negotiating legal agreements - preferably IP-licences or corporate agreements (desirable).
• Strong numerical skills, preferably with experience of budgeting and financial management (desirable).

We are a research university with a global reputation for excellence. Our ideas and expertise change the world for the better, making a real difference to society.