Assistant Director, NIHR Research Infrastructure

LGC Ltd (www.lgcgroup.com) is an international life sciences company working with customers in the government, academic, pharmaceutical, agricultural biotechnology, food, environment, security, and sports sectors. LGC’s Grant Management Group (GMG) manages a number of research funding programmes on behalf of government departments and other large national health bodies, to improve NHS patient health and care. The NIHR is funded through the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and was established with the aim of creating a health and care research system in which the NHS supports outstanding individuals, working in world‑class facilities, conducting leading‑edge research focused on the needs of patients and the public. The NIHR Research Infrastructure provides a platform to enable research by creating an environment where early‑stage and applied research can thrive. Our Research Infrastructure consists of research expertise, specialist facilities, a research delivery workforce, and support services. The NIHR invests more than £606 million a year of infrastructure funding through a number of different five‑year infrastructure funding schemes.

We are looking to recruit an experienced and motivated leader to manage a busy team delivering a portfolio of high‑profile National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) research infrastructure funding schemes. This role is responsible for overseeing the delivery of a significant portfolio of NIHR funding schemes with an annual budget of ~£350m per annum. Reporting to the Director of Research Infrastructure, this is a senior role within LGC’s Grant Management Group delivering a diverse range of research management activities and providing leadership to the infrastructure team. The postholder will bring their broad perspective of academia, research funding, project management and health‑related policy to this leadership role. They will be confident interacting with their peers and the external scientific community; able to demonstrate critical thinking, and an ability to influence and build productive relationships. The postholder will work closely with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the leadership of NIHR to deliver a challenging portfolio of research funding, with responsibility for the end‑to‑end management of the funding schemes.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership and Support: ensuring a productive and motivated team while delivering a fast‑paced and busy workload. Maintain a strong team spirit and support opportunities for learning and professional development as required. This post will be responsible for a team of around 17 staff, with direct line management of three team members.
• Annual Deliverables and Work Plans: responsible for delivering an annual work plan of both strategic and operational objectives. This will require oversight of annual deliverables and the tracking of progress across research commissioning, annual reporting, strategic reviews and internal continuous improvement projects.
• Budgets and Forecasts: work with the Director of Infrastructure and Finance team, to support forecast of the annual budgets required to deliver the team activities.
• Oversight: responsible for agreeing responsibilities of delivering activities with the team. Act as the quality control and internal sign‑off for work delivered by the infrastructure team.
• Commissioning research: Oversee the delivery of new funding competitions to agreed deadlines. Agree timelines and project plans with DHSC and NIHR support teams; sign‑off competition documents and delivery approach; attend committee meetings and provide support on processes and internally approve minutes and feedback to applicants.
• Contract and risk monitoring: provide advice on contractual requests/changes required during the lifetime of an award; support requests for information and monitor progress and finance reports to identify risks. Attend meetings with Directors/DHSC to discuss risks and mitigation strategies. Provide assurance to DHSC on the use of public funds.
• Impact and scheme strategic development: Support the review of impact and outputs from existing funding schemes to develop recommendations for DHSC to shape funding calls. When required, respond to requests from DHSC/NIHR to develop and deliver new priority funding calls, assessment of approaches and monitoring requirements.
• Stakeholder engagement: Develop a productive working relationship with DHSC colleagues and the Scientific Director for NIHR Infrastructure. Work with Directors and managers to engage with NIHR policy development and news. Facilitate collaboration and cross‑working between infrastructure schemes and other areas of NIHR.
• Continuous Improvement: build on experience to develop and simplify processes to reduce the bureaucratic burden of research for both researchers and research managers.
• Flexible support to the GMG leadership team: provide a high level of support to the leadership team of GMG and NIHR and engage as required on projects and working groups. Deputise for the Director of Infrastructure where needed.
• Embodying LGC’s values: passion, curiosity, brilliance, integrity and respect.

It is anticipated that this role specification may be reviewed in consultation with the postholder from time to time and may evolve in response to business need.

Qualifications

Essential

• A PhD degree (or equivalent) in a relevant health related field or significant equivalent experience.
• Significant relevant experience of managing research funding in a clinical, academic, industrial, funding agency or charity setting and exposure to working with senior leaders in academia and government.
• Understanding of research impact and how to monitor and measure it.
• Previous experience of leading a team and planning and monitoring workloads and evidence of successful delivery.
• Excellent project planning and management skills; management able to prioritise and manage multiple tasks, working to challenging targets and deadlines.
• Confident managing risk and uncertainty.
• The ability to employ creative approaches to effectively communicate complex information to individuals and groups from a range of different backgrounds and different seniority levels.
• Committed team player with an ability to build effective working relationships.

Desirable

• Data analysis skills.

Additional Information

Compensation, Benefits