Head Of Clinical Trial Recruitment & Workforce in England

LGC Ltd 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) works with UK government departments and arm’s length bodies to support medical and health research across the UK. Our activities include funding call management, contract management and Intellectual Property management. We work with senior level stakeholders in academia, the NHS, government and industry to promote improvements in medical and health care in the UK and overseas.

This is a 12 months contract. The Head of Clinical Trial Recruitment & Workforce at LGC serves as a strategic and operational lead within the NIHR Life Sciences Industry Hub. Collaborating with the Director of Operations, the role co-develops and drives the overall implementation plan to increase recruitment for commercial clinical trials across NHS R&D infrastructure. The role serves as a consultant and operational link between the NIHR, NHS R&D networks, and the commercial life sciences sector. It manages recruitment processes to cover all essential support service agreements within the UK commercial portfolio.

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to capably perform each of the following essential duties:

• Strategic Leadership & System Consultation
• Workplan Development & Implementation: Collaborate closely with the Industry Hub Operations Director to develop and implement national recruitment improvement workstreams.
• Industry & R&D Interface: Function as a national authority and consultant linking NIHR R&D, NHS infrastructure, and commercial industry sponsors to increase recruitment reliability, tackle enrolment challenges, and reinforce sponsor trust in UK delivery.
• Collaborate with the Industry Hub Operations Director and key partners across NIHR Infrastructure and the wider research ecosystem to remove operational silos between study set-up and trial delivery.
• Ensure national workforce and recruitment strategies align with the NIHR Industry Hub Commercial Portfolio Lifecycle. These strategies must also match national research priorities to meet the 150-day timelines at all sites.
• Performance, Data, and Quality Assurance
• Incentive Reform: Define tangible growth benchmarks and build models to improve year-on-year recruitment growth and screening consistency rather than conservative targeting.
• Tracking Milestones and Growth: Operationalise high-volume and specialised therapeutic areas to establish national and specialty-specific growth benchmarks.
• Performance Analysis: Identify patterns in recruitment performance, addressing post-FPFV drop-offs, zero-enrolling sites, and lower-recruiting study phases across NHS Trusts.
• Issue Resolution & Customer Concern: Serve as the national operational point for addressing complex recruitment blockages, site-level capacity constraints, or trial accrual failures related to customer concerns.
• Workforce Capacity & Financial Reinvestment
• Capacity Release & Redesign: Identify workforce, service, and infrastructure constraints, introducing alternative and shared capacity models to release research capacity.
• Analyse research income recovery and distribution across Trusts. Develop and share core reinvestment principles with R&D departments. This ensures trial income directly strengthens clinical research workforce capacity.

Qualifications

• Extensive operational experience in driving clinical-trial recruitment, participant retention, and delivery to target within NHS research and development or a commercial sponsor environment.
• Experience navigating the UK clinical-trials lifecycle, including operational collaboration with the HRA, MHRA, and NIHR Research Delivery Network systems.
• Substantial experience in workforce-capacity planning, clinical-team resourcing, or managing R&D financial recovery/reinvestment structures within the NHS.
• Deep understanding of post-set-up trial-delivery challenges, recruitment-performance analytics, and clinical-research workforce dynamics across secondary, primary, and specialized care.
• Highly developed consultation and negotiation skills, with the proven ability to bridge commercial industry requirements and NHS system capacity.
• Proficiency in data-driven project management, including operational dashboards used to monitor recruitment velocity, identify underperforming sites, and mitigate delivery risks.

Preferred Knowledge and Qualifications:

• Experience leading large-scale operational change or scaling standardised pathways across multiple health boards or networks.
• Detailed knowledge of the regulatory landscape and technical-assurance requirements governing ATMPs, oncology, or multi-setting and decentralised clinical trials.

Additional Information

ABOUT LGC: LGC is a leading, global life science tools company, providing mission-critical components and solutions into high-growth application areas across the human healthcare and applied market segments. Its high-quality product portfolio is comprised of mission-critical tools for genomic analysis and for quality assurance applications, which are typically embedded and recurring within our customers’ products and workflows and are valued for their performance, quality, and range.

OUR VALUES

• PASSION
• CURIOSITY
• INTEGRITY
• BRILLIANCE
• RESPECT

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES

LGC strongly believes that every job applicant and employee should be valued for their individual talents regardless of age, disability, race, color, ethnic or national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion, or belief. Short listing, interviewing and selection will always be carried out without regard to gender, sexual orientation, marital status, color, race, nationality, ethnic or national origins, religion or belief, age, or trade union membership.

For more information about LGC, please visit our website.