Pharmacy Lead

Terms and Benefits

• Salary: £45,000–£65,000 per annum depending on experience
• Contract: Permanent, full time
• Annual leave: 31 days inclusive of bank holidays
• Additional leave: half a day per year of service, up to two additional days
• Birthday leave: one additional day off on your birthday
• Location: on-site, Walton Summit, Bamber Bridge, Preston
• Probation: 6 months
• Profit share scheme and equity options scheme in development

This is a senior hire into a business at an inflection point. We are small enough that you will have real ownership and real visibility, and growing fast enough that what you build now will matter for years. The person who joins this role will not be a number. They will be a foundational part of how we build and run one of the UK’s most significant pharmacy operations. You will report directly to our Head of Operations — a highly experienced clinical pharmacist — who will work closely with you on governance, quality, and operational strategy. This is a role for someone ready to lead, not be led. Beyond this role, as the business continues to grow — and it is growing fast — leads become heads, and heads become directors. We are building a leadership team for the long term, and we want people who want to grow with the business, not pass through it.

The Role

You will own the pharmacy operation end to end — dispensing, checking, and fulfilment — alongside accountability for the governance, compliance, and people infrastructure that underpins it. This is a hands-on operational leadership role. You will be on the floor, running the day-to-day, and ensuring the operation performs to the highest standard. Stepping back from the detail is something you will earn over time by building the right team and systems around you — it is not a given from day one. You will be working within a modern, technology-first environment. We run our own proprietary order management and prescribing systems, with deep API integrations across our client base. You will need to get to grips with our systems quickly and be comfortable operating in a digital-first way. This is not a role for someone who thinks in terms of traditional pharmacy workflows. This role requires significant experience at scale. We are ideally looking for candidates who have operated in high-volume, technology-enabled pharmacy environments — but we are open to candidates from community pharmacy backgrounds where they can clearly demonstrate the volume, leadership capability, and digital mindset this role demands. What we are not looking for is someone whose experience is limited to managing a small community branch at low volume.

Relevant backgrounds include:

• Hub and spoke pharmacy operations
• Distance selling pharmacy
• High-volume online or digital pharmacy
• Centralised dispensing or fulfilment-led operations

Essential:

• Proven experience leading or operating within a high-volume dispensary and fulfilment operation — 20,000+ items per month minimum
• Strong people leadership — building, managing, and developing a team under sustained pressure
• Operational instinct — throughput management, bottleneck resolution, capacity planning
• Modern, digital-first mindset — comfortable with technology, proprietary systems, and fast-moving operational environments
• Governance and compliance awareness — able to support regulatory standards, contribute to incident management, and help represent the operation to auditors and regulators alongside senior clinical leadership
• Professional documentation capability — SOPs, incident logs, regulatory-grade records written to a high standard
• Data-literate — tracking KPIs, interpreting performance data, using it to drive decisions
• High personal standards

Professional background:

• Registered pharmacist or Accuracy Checking Technician (ACT) — GPhC registered where applicable
• Candidates from other backgrounds will be considered where direct, relevant high-volume operational and leadership experience is clearly demonstrated