Job Description
As the UK Horizons, Delivery Lead you will play a key role in overseeing the delivery and operations of initiatives under this programme, and identifying new opportunities to deliver impact in the UK. You will ensure the successful roll-out of the entire programme and coordination amongst team members to maximise impact across the portfolio of initiatives.
This position is based in King’s Cross, London, with in-office work required 3 days per week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Role and Responsibilities
Operational Leadership & Coordination:
- Design, implement, and oversee processes, systems, and strategies that deliver operational excellence across the UK Horizons programme
- Ensure coordination across team members and initiatives to maximise impact across the portfolio of efforts
- Oversee budgets and ensure efficient use of resources across initiatives.
Programme Delivery and Implementation Support:
- Support programme leads to develop and monitor programme results and impact (OKRs/KPIs), ensuring goals and objectives are met for each initiative
- Provide ongoing support to programme leads, assisting with their needs to launch, implement, and scale initiatives effectively. This includes providing surge support to accelerate timelines and surfacing and tackling bottlenecks to execution.
- Strengthen co-ordination and collaboration across the team, including organising team structure maximising efficiency and efficacy of the team
- Facilitate cross-programme learning and ensure that best practices are shared among team members.
Strategy Development and Special Projects:
- Provide strategic guidance to programme leads, aligning their efforts with the mission and goals of Renaissance Philanthropy and the UK Horizons Programme.
- Identify and incubate new opportunities to develop and launch initiatives that bolster the UK’s R&D ecosystem, enhancing the impact of existing efforts.
- Develop and lead special projects and strategic initiatives that drive innovation and address emerging challenges in the R&D landscape.
Outcomes
If you are successful in this role, in three years' time, you will have helped to unlock the potential of all the initiatives under the UK Horizons programme by enabling coordination and operational excellence across teams, identifying new opportunities for growth and impact, and ensuring that the team delivers the impact it set out to achieve. This will have ultimately advanced the UK’s R&D ecosystem and advanced critical R&D technologies that can create a brighter future for all.
Qualifications
- Proven experience (5+ years) in a management role, preferably within philanthropy, research, or impact-driven organisations
- Strong background in operations, project management, or programme coordination with demonstrated success in optimising processes and managing complex portfolios.
- Exceptionally fast learner. You enjoy (and have experience) quickly ramping up on new technical and organisational topics.
- Excellent communication, interpersonal, and public speaking skills.
- Can get to the crux of an issue and quickly sort signal from noise.
- Creative and attached to outcomes, not process – you’re constantly looking for new paths to the destination and excited to switch gears if there’s a faster, better way to get something done.
- Team player with a proven track record of working well across teams and with external partners.
- A passion for addressing hard challenges with difficult odds.
- Overall, this position requires a high level of technical expertise, strategic acumen, and effective communication skills.
- Familiarity with the UK research and innovation landscape, including within advanced R&D sectors.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in a scientific or technical degree; Master’s degree or higher preferred.
- First-hand experience helping build/scale new initiatives from the ground up. R&D programmes are even better.
- A strong network you can turn to for advice and support when immediate answers and options are unclear.
Values
You will thrive within our team, if you:
- Have strong mission and vision alignment: You believe in the power of science, innovation, and technology to create a brighter future for all.
- Exhibit high agency: You can move mountains and break perceived constraints.
- Inspire others and are highly collaborative: You can motivate others to join your mission and goals. You understand the value of going further by working with others.
- Value exceptional talent and the power of networks: You can spot or nurture exceptional talent and believe in the value of building networks and the power law of talent.
- Are comfortable working in fast-moving and ambitious teams: You are not afraid of ambiguity and enjoy working at pace.
Diversity
We encourage anyone who is interested in this role to apply, regardless of whether you feel you meet 100% of the qualifications. The top candidates will bring their own unique perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds from a variety of industries along with many but not necessarily all the skills listed above.
Recruiting, hiring, mentoring, and retaining a diverse workforce is critical to our success. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.
Renaissance Philanthropy is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
Next steps:
To apply, please fill out an application. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Further Context:
About Renaissance Philanthropy
The mission of Renaissance Philanthropy, a nonprofit organisation, is to fuel a 21st century renaissance by increasing the ambition of philanthropists, scientists, and innovators.
Our aim is to activate a virtuous loop of increasing ambition and impact between philanthropists and innovators: by identifying frontier experts both in science and in new ways of solving problems; by tapping into the growing number of emerging philanthropists; and by building multi-sector initiatives that can harness the power of philanthropy, markets, and governments.
We advance our mission by advising philanthropists, surfacing breakthrough ideas, and incubating ambitious initiatives.
UK Horizons Programme Context
The UK is home to world-class universities and is recognised for its strength in fundamental research. However, to ultimately lead in science and technology, the UK needs to bolster its translational capabilities – pathways for the most exceptional scientists to translate their ambitious ideas into real-world impact.
As an Activation Partner to the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA), Renaissance Philanthropy is leveraging its expertise in raising the ambition of scientists, innovators, and philanthropists to strengthen the UK's R&D ecosystem and unlock breakthroughs through the UK Horizons Program.
The UK Horizons Programme is a portfolio of ambitious initiatives working to build networks of exceptional scientists and increase their ambition, expand the diversity of science translation mechanisms, attract flexible and patient capital for scientists in the UK by strengthening the philanthropic ecosystem, and build research translation strategies.
Live initiatives include:
- The Alliance of Talent Leaders Across Science (ATLAS) initiative which seeks to identify, support, and connect leaders who are cultivating technical and scientific communities across the UK.
- The Higgs Community which seeks to be home to the most exceptional scientists and innovators in the UK, interested in turning ambitious science into real-world impact.
- The Big if True Science Accelerator (BiTS) seeks to train the next generation of programme leaders running co-ordinated research programs.
- Translational Strategies: Efforts to support research programs to develop Progress Coalitions (forward-looking cross-sector coalitions of civil society, industry, academia, philanthropy, and government) and philanthropic funds that can scale the impact of existing coordinated R&D programmes.
Initiatives under development include:
- A fellowship programme to support early-career scientists with big if true ideas
- An initiative to incubate BBN-model start-ups (i.e. new translation engines) in the UK.
- A study group to convene researchers and conduct “horizon scans” to support governments and philanthropists to identify opportunities to unlock translational R&D.
- Efforts to strengthen the philanthropic ecosystem in the UK by building a community of philanthropists and funders with an interest in supporting the UK R&D ecosystem
The goals of UK Horizons programme include:
- Talent: Cultivating communities of exceptional technical talent and increasing their ambition
- Translational Mechanisms: Increasing the diversity of pathways through which scientists can translate their ideas into impact beyond legacy forms of academia
- Capital: Unlocking philanthropic capital for high-risk, high-reward science
- Translation: Creating the necessary conditions and environments for the translation of R&D, from strengthening commercialization pathways to regulatory support for new innovations
This position was originally posted by Renaissance Philanthropy and has been curated by PurposePhil Career. To apply, please visit the original listing on the "apply" link below. We are not affiliated with the employer organization of this job ad or consultancy, and provide this curated listing as a service to our users.
