Principal Funding Manager

Job Title: Principal Funding Manager

Location: London, Stevenage or Edinburgh

Job Type: Permanent

Agencies: We will only work with recruitment partners on our preferred supplier list and will not engage with speculative CVs submitted.

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

About the role:

The Funding team at LifeArc has oversight of all grant funding activity across the organisation. Reporting to the Head of Funding, this Principal Funding Manager role involves independently leading on all funding-related activity in the Rare Disease Translational Challenge area, across the full funding lifecycle, including line managing a team of Senior Managers and Managers in the Funding team. The Rare Disease funding portfolio is significant and complex, and the Principal Business Manager will be responsible for ensuring high quality end-to-end oversight and hands-on delivery.

LifeArc’s value-add funding culture involves providing high quality scientific and technical advice to our applicants and awardees, at all levels of seniority. As such, the Principal Funding Manager must be able to offer credible advice on translation in rare disease, across modalities and at different stages of development. They should have a deep understanding of the ecosystem in which our funding is deployed.

The role also requires in depth knowledge of grant funding policies and processes and is expected to proactively make suggestions for improvement where appropriate, playing an integral part in shaping, developing and continuously improving LifeArc’s Funding Framework, ensuring rigour and safeguarding LifeArc’s significant financial commitment in this area.

• Independently lead LifeArc’s multi-million-pound Rare Disease funding portfolio across the full lifecycle, including pre- and post-award. Ensuring that the highest quality science is supported, that it is positioned to achieve patient impact, and that LifeArc’s significant financial commitment in this area is safeguarded.
• Effectively line manage and mentor a team of Funding managers working across the Rare Disease portfolio and beyond, allocating responsibilities across the RD funding portfolio appropriately and commensurate with reports’ experience, minimising risk.
• Play an integral role in developing and continuously improving LifeArc’s Funding Framework of Policies, Processes and People, enabling us to operate as a credible and responsible funder.
• Act as an ambassador for LifeArc as a Funder in the external environment, using their existing network to further raise LifeArc’s profile as a Funder, with the ability to communicate confidently and credibly with all key stakeholders in the ecosystem.
• Work to effectively integrate their line of the new Funding function into the matrix environment in the RD TC, ensuring that their team are performing at a high level consistently, and working collaboratively with other colleagues across LifeArc, to deliver Funding effectively and with rigour.
• Handling challenging situations with diplomacy and integrity, ensuring that LifeArc’s reputation as a value-add funder is maintained and our partners’ expectations exceeded.
• Able to communicate effectively, getting the tone right and flexing their style for different types of writing and speaking, including external communications with the most senior stakeholders.
• Be the go-to colleague, internally and externally, for Funding in Rare Disease, maintaining a presence in the ecosystem and keeping abreast of developments, advising internally on our Rare Disease funding strategy.
• Develop, champion and implement Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) policies and procedures, both internally and externally, to ensure Funding is delivered in line with our strategy.

Education & experience required:

• Qualified to degree level in a scientific discipline with a PhD and several years’ experience in translation, gained in industry, academia, consulting and/ or translational funding.
• Strong life science foundational knowledge.
• Significant experience of translational research in Rare Disease, across modalities and stages of development, and of the ecosystems in which we operate.
• Scientific and professional credibility and significant experience of interacting as a peer and/ or advisor with senior academics and other senior stakeholders.
• Significant experience in the design, establishment and front-office delivery of funding calls to further the R&D goals of organisations. A keen understanding of funding policies, terms & conditions, legal requirements and the complexities of managing multi-million-pound funding initiatives
• Significant experience of the translational research funding landscape in the UK and other key stakeholders operating within it.
• Working knowledge of international ecosystems and the key differences from the UK ecosystem.
• Significant experience of academic-led translation gained either directly or as a Funder or other close partner.
• A sound knowledge of IP-related issues, the regulatory environment and downstream development for therapeutics and diagnostics for Rare Disease.

Skills & abilities:

• Good level of self-awareness, recognises own strengths, development areas and seeks to develop own self.
• Good awareness of different professional styles, and the ability to flex to draw the most potential from direct line reports and other colleagues in the matrix.
• Have a successful track record of handling negotiations with integrity and diplomacy

About us:

At LifeArc, our ambition is to make life science life changing. We do this by advancing scientific discoveries beyond the lab, faster, so that they can shape the next generation of diagnostics, treatments, and cures.

Working at the cutting edge of translational science and as the early-stage translation specialists, we progress scientific discoveries on their journey to becoming a medicine, diagnostic or intervention that improve patients’ lives. Our work begins by seeking out innovative science, then helping to develop this to a point where there is a clinical and commercial pathway for others to invest the time and money to take it further forward.

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.