Senior Director, Translational Genetics

We are seeking a highly experienced, motivated and innovative individual to join us as a Senior Director in Translational Genetics, which is part of the broader GSK R&D Translational Sciences organisation. The successful candidate will lead a team of translational genetics scientists, providing strategic leadership combined with deep analytical expertise and working within a dynamic and highly collaborative environment to identify, develop and deliver a portfolio of translational data-driven work to positively impact and accelerate delivery of the GSK portfolio.

The team will support target assessments across our priority therapeutic areas and, in particular, be accountable for understanding and addressing prioritised translational questions relevant to our portfolio, which will frequently involve innovative thinking and application of analytic approaches to novel settings.

You will have strong expertise in association genetics, with particular emphasis on leveraging statistical genetics approaches to address translational questions, and demonstrable experience of addressing key scientific questions via the integration of genetics with genomics (especially proteomics) and clinical phenotypic data. Your work will have application across therapeutic areas and will inform target discovery and validation, biomarker discovery and characterisation, indication and patient subgroup selection, and further our understanding of the pathobiology of specific diseases.

The successful candidate should have line management experience, and their team will work in a multidisciplinary, collaborative and scientifically driven environment interacting with GSK scientists and leaders from a broad range of functions to advance drug discovery and clinical development. You will be encouraged and supported to identify, establish and guide collaborations with external academics and external institutions aligned with strategic priorities. There will be ongoing opportunities and deliberate focus on furthering your scientific and leadership excellence through delivery of impactful work, interactions with key senior stakeholders and undertaking leadership and development programmes.

• Provide strategic leadership to set the direction of your team with a focus on identifying and delivering key translational activities alongside ensuring continued alignment with evolving organisational priorities and working to committed timelines.
• Utilize deep expertise in genetic analysis and the integration of genetics with genomic (including proteomics) and clinical phenotypic data to address targeted translational scientific questions and generate disease-relevant at-scale insights.
• Provide hands-on analytical expertise to accelerate the delivery of work packages that impact the GSK drug development pipeline.
• Work within and lead cross-functional GSK project teams as appropriate, with an emphasis on respiratory, hepatology, neurodegeneration, immunology and/or renal disease.
• Identify, set up and oversee external strategically aligned scientific collaborations.
• Highly effective communication of analysis findings, with expert interpretation, to project teams and senior leaders.
• Work with focus and agility to deliver personal and team deliverables against objectives, demonstrating strong statistical, analytic and critical thinking skills with understanding of the translational context of your work.
• Stay up to date regarding advances and emerging technologies and methodologies in translational genetics and, in particular, the integration of genetics with genomics to address translational questions.
• Lead a team of direct reports and foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous professional learning within the team.

• PhD or equivalent advanced degree in a relevant scientific discipline (e.g. statistical genetics, genetic epidemiology, biomedical statistics, computational sciences, bioinformatics or machine learning) with a history of impactful scientific publications and/or presentations.
• Experienced in genetics and conducting analyses that integrate genetics, genomics and/or clinical phenotypic data to address scientific questions relevant to drug discovery and development.
• Experienced in working effectively in multidisciplinary teams involving stakeholders from across functions.
• Experienced and adept in effective communication of complex scientific concepts to diverse audiences.
• Advanced expertise in understanding the key scientific question and identifying, developing and delivering innovative analytical solutions to comprehensively address the specific question.
• Experienced in driving the development and implementation of new methodologies and approaches to integrate genetics and genomics to answer translational questions in drug discovery and development.
• Experienced in setting up and overseeing external collaborations, ensuring delivery of impact for all parties.
• Experienced and skilled at dynamic prioritisation of resources and working effectively and flexibly to ensure work undertaken remains tightly aligned with organisational priorities to maximise delivery of impactful work.
• Experience of successfully leading and managing a high-performance team.
• Strong proficiency in at least one of R and Python, with a track record of writing reproducible and scalable code that abides to FAIR principles.
• Demonstrable understanding of the stages of drug discovery and development.