Director, Anti-infectives Preclinical Strategy and Portfolio

Location: London

Job Type: Permanent, hybrid working with 3 days required in the office

Please note: the closing date for applications is Friday 24th April.

Are you passionate about making life science life changing and delivering impact for patients? We want to hear from you.

About us

LifeArc is a not-for-profit life science organisation, leading the way for change in rare diseases in the UK and supporting promising initiatives in global health. We seek out research in areas of unmet need that has great potential, providing support to help it become breakthroughs that change lives.

About the role

The Director, Anti-infectives Preclinical Strategy and Portfolio is a key scientific leader responsible for shaping, directing, and delivering LifeArc’s preclinical research strategy for developing anti‑infective therapies. This role is accountable for developing the strategy and managing delivery of internal, collaborative, and funded projects and programmes, within a wider portfolio of drug discovery and diagnostics development programs. The Director will work closely with other senior leaders to drive, align, and integrate relevant activities. The Director will ensure high scientific rigor, programme momentum, timely milestone delivery, and robust decision‑making to progress assets through early development and towards IND‑enabling studies. As part of an adaptive, dynamic, and matrixed research environment, the Director will provide scientific and strategic leadership of the preclinical anti‑infectives portfolio, ensuring alignment with the broader LifeArc AMR strategy. The role may also involve line management of Project Managers and Scientists, actively driving and delivering portfolios aligned with LifeArc’s strategic goals.

About you and the key responsibilities

• Overseeing and coordinating the strategic and tactical focus of the antimicrobial/AMR preclinical workstream, ensuring efficient execution across multiple programmes, including collaborative programmes such as Pathways to Antimicrobial Clinical Efficacy (PACE) within a broader Global Health Infection portfolio.
• Working with multidisciplinary and cross‑functional teams to create and maintain programme plans with clear milestones, decision points, data requirements, and go/no‑go criteria.
• Ensuring milestones are delivered on time, within budget, and at the level of scientific quality required to support robust scientific and operational interrogation.
• Contributing to strategic planning, prioritisation, and decision‑making.
• Ensuring alignment of scientific priorities, resource allocation, and programme progression with organisational strategy and patient‑impact goals.
• Providing expert scientific guidance to progress assets through early discovery toward IND‑enabling studies.
• Establishing and overseeing translational strategies, including mechanism‑of‑action work, biomarker development, post‑validation progression, and asset optimisation.
• Championing best practices in preclinical research and ensure scientific rigour, innovation, and high‑quality data generation.
• Actively following current progress in field, scanning the external landscape for scientific and technical developments, to identify and exploit new capabilities.
• Serving on internal and external scientific review committees, providing expert evaluation of data packages, milestone readiness, and budget utilisation.
• Supporting due diligence activities for potential assets, collaborations, partnerships, and platform expansion opportunities.
• Building and maintaining strong networks with external scientific partners, collaborators, and funding bodies.
• Representing LifeArc on relevant external committees and acting as an external ambassador to promote LifeArc’s preclinical projects and activities.

Education & experience required

• PhD in a relevant scientific discipline, preferably with additional relevant post‑doctoral research experience.
• A respected leader in anti‑microbial drug discovery with a mature network in the UK and internationally.
• Extensive and current or recent experience leading multiple drug discovery projects in a Pharma or Biotech environment, including leadership of anti‑microbial drug discovery programmes from initiation through to late preclinical/IND stage.
• Strong understanding of the key data needed to progress drug discovery programmes through preclinical milestones to IND.
• Firm operational knowledge of later stage preclinical‑ and clinical‑development pathways to expediate patient impact.
• Proven record of scientific leadership, delivery of complex research programs, and commitment to innovation, high‑quality and rigour.
• Substantial experience leading, managing and resourcing portfolios with multiple stakeholders, including external partners and as part of collaborations or consortia.
• An experienced line manager, encompassing performance and goal setting and the successful development of team members.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with proven ability to work with senior R&D leaders, Board and Executive level.
• Self‑awareness and a high level of professionalism, a can‑do attitude and with consistent track record of high impact delivery.
• Preferably experience across multiple therapeutic modalities (e.g., biologics, small molecules, cell therapy).

Skills & abilities

• Sharing knowledge of, and contributing to, current scientific literature and developments within area of expertise.
• Ability to inspire teams, influence stakeholders, and drive strategic initiatives.
• Deep scientific excellence, critical and analytical thinking, experienced problem solver.
• Skilled at building relationships and fostering cross‑functional teamwork in a matrix environment.
• Ability to align scientific priorities with organisational goals and anticipate future needs.
• Inspirational line manager of both direct reports and cross‑functional teams.
• Exceptional planning skills and execution of projects with a delivery mindset and excellent attention to detail.

What we can offer you

Focused on finding life changing solutions for underserved patients, our people thrive in an inclusive, and supportive environment that prioritises their health and wellbeing. Our multidisciplinary approach guarantees our people growth opportunities, while our culture of innovation and collaboration drives the impact we make delivering on our purpose of ‘putting patients at the centre of everything we do’. We are dedicated to creating a diverse, flexible, equitable and happy work environment so our colleagues can thrive as their truest selves. We act with courage, curiosity, care & commitment to deliver quality & excellence for our patients and each other. Join us, and you’ll be given the scope to develop your professional skills and experience in a safe, supportive and challenging environment. Salary will be determined by qualifications and experience along with other exceptional benefits. Because we understand everyone has different requirements, our flexible benefits allow you to choose those which are important to you. Our pension scheme offers employer contributions of up to 12%, private health insurance, and annual leave of 31 days PLUS bank holidays.

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people from minority ethnic backgrounds, for example, are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At LifeArc we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so whatever your background or lived experience, if you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. Our top priority is finding the best candidate, and you may be just right for this or other roles. We all have potential. At LifeArc, you’ll discover what you can really do with it.