Manager_Associate Director - Project Management
On-siteLondon, England, United Kingdom
Job Summary
Partner with Programme and Project Leaders to understand strategic objectives and orchestrate matrix teams to deliver against project objectives across the full discovery journey. Work with functional leads to ensure resource allocation, translate scientific goals into integrated project plans, and coordinate execution across wet lab, ML research, data science, and engineering teams. Proactively manage plans, budgets, risks, and issues, identifying blockers and escalating to senior management as needed. Coordinate joint governance bodies, maintain documentation, and communicate status clearly to internal leadership and external partners while embedding improvements to ways of working. Operate at programme level with visibility across every project within the osteoporosis programme, navigating the ambiguity of discovery-stage science with confidence.
Required Qualifications
- A degree in life sciences, project management, or a related field
- Advanced degree or equivalent industry experience
- Significant Programme/Project management experience in biotech, pharma, or comparable scientific R&D settings
- Experience operating as the senior Project manager for a major, multi-year effort
- Comfort managing a programme where scope and workstreams may evolve significantly
- Scientific literacy sufficient to engage credibly with discussions spanning wet lab biology, single-cell omics, and machine learning
- Grounding in the discovery pipeline (target validation, hit-to-lead, lead optimisation)
- Familiarity with stage-gate or portfolio governance frameworks as applied to early discovery programmes
- Experience overseeing third-party or outsourced work packages (e.g. CROs, academic collaborators, specialist service providers)
- Fluency with modern project management methodologies, artifacts and tools (e.g. MS Project, Smartsheet, Asana, Jira; Gantt, RAID logs)
- Strong organisational skills with a record of managing complex, interdependent works treams in matrixed environments
- Comfort with the operational realities of R&D projects
- Excellent written and verbal communication
- Ability to write clearly for senior external audiences
- Are comfortable working in a matrixed environment
- Take ownership of your work
- Proactively seek opportunities to contribute
- Enable others to do their best work
- Communicate openly and directly
- Give and receive feedback constructively
- Handle challenging conversations with respect
- Actively seek out diverse perspectives
- Build strong working relationships
- Contribute to shared goals across teams
- Embrace challenges with openness and resilience
- Set high standards for yourself
- Strive to deliver meaningful outcomes
Desired Qualifications
- Advanced degree or equivalent industry experience welcome
- Ideally including early-stage discovery programmes (target ID through to candidate selection)
- Awareness of the discovery-to-IND pathway and its major inflection points (IND-enabling tox, CMC/formulation, DMPK, regulatory strategy)
- Any exposure to pre-IND regulatory interactions or translational/preclinical handover
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