Purpose of the post
The Strategic Lead – External Funding role was created in September 2024 in response to our business need to grow and diversify our funding portfolio. HDR UK receives majority funding from our Core Funders, subject to satisfactory performance in formal periodic reviews. However, in the period since our establishment we have developed increasingly competitive performance at winning additional funding beyond our ‘Core award’ (referred to as ‘non-Core’). The Strategic Lead – External Funding is a pivotal figure within HDR UK as we seek to build our non-Core performance further still and scale the institute during this next phase of its development. The role works in close partnership with our distributed research community and prospective funders, building and maintaining the links critical to the delivery of the Director’s research vision and the development of HDR UK at local, national and international levels.
Main responsibilities
Operational Leadership
- Act as the single point of contact for all HDR UK’s pre-award activities; for applicants, finance teams (HDR UK and those in partner institutions), contract teams (HDR UK and those in partner institutions), other key stakeholders, and ethical review/impact processes.
- At point of award, ensure seamless handovers to set up successful post-award implementation (within HDR UK and in partner institutions where applicable).
- Manage HDR UK’s ‘in kind’ portfolio ensuring a consistency of approach, clarity of approach that aligns to funder requirements whilst also ensuring credible delivery capacity by the Institute.
Strategy and Governance
- Contribute to shaping and maintaining the HDR UK Research Funding Strategy.
- Advise the Director and our Senior Leadership Team on matters of research strategy, risk, process and planning.
- Provide guidance on research funding issues to the Institute’s senior academic managers and for senior academic and professional services staff in the Institute’s associated collaborative research ventures.
- Contribute to briefings for our corporate governance structures, ensuring appropriate approvals to submit are in place.
- Support individual programme teams to understand how their programmatic objectives align and integrate with the Research Funding Strategy.
- Assist the Director in fundraising ventures and diversification of funding sources, participate in expansion activities (investments, acquisitions, partnerships and alliances etc.).
Portfolio Management
- Maintain and develop HDR UK’s pre award processes, ensuring cohesive application development and robust compliance with HDR UK’s internal approvals process, supporting our shift from reactive application and funding acceptance to a scalable, proactive and tactical approach, informed by our portfolio ambitions and the HDR UK Vision and Mission.
- Manage our demand management processes, working with finance colleagues to monitor, control and forecast our funding pipeline.
- Embed sustainability reporting as we manage the impact of Full Economic Costing across our portfolio including active risk management.
Relationship Management
- Internally: Work to enable integration, community and teamwork between all HDR UK teams. Ensure the collective provision of a modern and responsive service. Initiate, lead and manage change across HDR UK activity to improve policy and procedure as required.
- Externally: Meticulous alignment with funder strategy will be key, actively creating opportunities to shape strategy and ideation of potential bid teams. The role plays a central role in this by developing and maintaining strong, positive relationships with key HDR UK stakeholders including partner research organisations, funders, and UK government departments and related bodies.
Experience
You must have a track record of success with:
- At least 3 years’ management or senior administrative experience gained in a higher education environment.
- Understanding of wider HE issues and regulatory context and of internal procedures.
- Experience of successfully managing staff, budgets and projects with outstanding programme management abilities.
- Experience of providing analysis and strategic advice to senior managers.
Skills
- Strong interpersonal skills including: mentoring/coaching, communication, negotiating and
- The ability to lead, inspire trust, and find common ground among competing view points.
- Creativity when it comes to building and strengthening organisational alliances and relationships.
- A working style that is up tempo, entrepreneurial, and consultative.
- Ability to analyse complex issues and innovate to resolve problems.
- Highly-developed management, leadership, organisation and planning skills.
- Ability to establish and maintain a network of personal working relationships with senior decision makers within and across universities
Please note, as we are a UK-based organisation, applicants must be living in, and eligible to work in, the UK. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.
We politely request no contact from recruitment agencies or media sales. We do not accept speculative CVs from recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.
