Research & Innovation Programme Manager in City of Westminster

The Opportunity Hesta is building a new model of women’s healthcare, and our first mission is to reimagine care for mothers through compassionate care, clinical excellence, and technology. Today, postnatal care is fragmented, reactive, and often fails to identify ongoing health needs. We are developing a clinically-validated, digital-first assessment and triage system designed to identify physical, mental, and longer-term health risks earlier, and route women and birthing parents into appropriate care.

We’re looking for an exceptional Research & Innovation Programme Manager to lead delivery of Hesta’s grant-funded R&D, spanning both our current feasibility study under the 2025 Femtech & AI programme, and our newly awarded >£1m Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst (BMC) programme grant. Together, these programmes are a critical part of how we build Hesta: not as a speculative health tech product, but as a clinically robust, regulator-ready, evidence-backed model of care. They enable us to systematically validate the science, data, and technical foundations behind our approach, ensuring that what we take to market delivers real outcomes for women and birthing parents, works within healthcare systems, and can scale. Our R&D will directly accelerate Hesta’s mission to transform postnatal care.

This is not a standard project management role. You will be responsible for orchestrating complex, multi-workstream programmes spanning:

• Clinical design and safety
• Data and technical infrastructure
• Regulatory and SaMD development
• NHS clinical feasibility studies
• Health economics and commercial validation

This is a hands-on role working directly with founders, clinicians, and technical team members. You’ll also work across a high-calibre network of partners, including NHS Trusts, academic institutions, regulatory advisors, and specialist suppliers, to ensure that delivery is rigorous, aligned, and meets Innovate UK and clinical standards. Your role is to turn an ambitious, multidisciplinary R&D programme into a delivered, regulator-ready product and evidence base.

What You’ll Do

You will initially work alongside our existing part-time Project Manager to strengthen delivery of the current feasibility study, bringing additional capacity, structure, and rigour across clinical, technical, and data workstreams. From there, you will transition into leading our Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst (BMC) programme, ensuring a seamless link between feasibility outputs and the development of a regulated, NHS-ready Software-as-a-Medical-Device (SaMD). This means ensuring that:

• Early data, insights, and technical decisions are robust, reusable, and aligned with the requirements of the larger programme
• There is clear continuity between phases, rather than duplication or rework
• Overall R&D pathway, from feasibility to regulated product, is coherent, efficient, and defensible

Your role is to connect the dots across phases, partners, and disciplines in the most time and cost efficient manner, turning ambitious research into a delivered, regulator-ready product and evidence base.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Owning the end-to-end programme delivery of the Innovate UK BMC project (£1.5m, 18 months), ensuring milestones, dependencies, and outputs are achieved.
• Coordinating multiple work packages (clinical, technical, regulatory, and commercial), managing interdependencies and critical paths.
• Leading programme governance, including reporting to Innovate UK, maintaining audit-ready documentation, and managing stage gates.
• Drive alignment across stakeholders: internal teams, NHS partners, academic collaborators, and external suppliers.
• Ensure continuity between feasibility and scale-up programmes, aligning outputs, data, and decisions to avoid rework and enable a smooth transition into the Innovate UK BMC programme.
• Manage risk and compliance, maintaining RAID logs and ensuring alignment with clinical safety (DCB0129), data governance, and regulatory requirements.
• Support NHS clinical study delivery, including coordination with trial sites, ethics processes, and data flows.
• Ensure high-quality outputs, including technical documentation, reports, and evidence required for regulatory and commercial progression.
• Translate R&D into strategy, connecting programme outputs to product development and go-to-market decisions.
• Contribute to future funding strategy, supporting grant applications and shaping Hesta’s R&D roadmap.

What You’ll Bring

• Strong programme or project management experience in complex, multi-stakeholder environments (health tech, research, consulting, or innovation).
• Experience working on grant-funded programmes (e.g. Innovate UK, NIHR, Horizon Europe, academic research).
• Proven ability to manage complex dependencies and deliver outcomes, not just track tasks.
• Exceptional organisation, attention to detail, and documentation skills - you create clarity and structure in ambiguity.
• Strong stakeholder management, comfortable working with clinicians, academics, engineers, and commercial teams.
• Ability to operate in regulated or high-rigour environments (or strong appetite to learn quickly).
• A high-agency, “make it happen” mindset: you move things forward despite complexity.

Bonus

• Experience with digital health, SaMD, or clinical research
• Familiarity with NHS systems, data governance, or regulatory frameworks
• Exposure to health economics or evaluation studies