Description

Site Name: UK - Hertfordshire - Stevenage, USA - Pennsylvania - Upper Providence
Posted Date: Sep 1 2025

Are you a strategic, collaborative and visionary leader looking to drive discovery projects to key inflection points?

We're seeking experienced Project Leaders to join the team on a permanent, full-time basis. Project Leaders within the Discovery Project Leadership Team are dedicated to the end-to-end leadership of projects spanning the entire drug discovery process, from target validation through to the selection of leads for optimization.

The Discovery Project Leader (PL) is the single point of accountability to strategically lead the discovery project from target validation. This is a decision-making position with high visibility and direct interaction with senior leaders. You will lead a multidisciplinary team which will define, implement, and oversee the discovery strategy for an asset. Collaboration and influence are critical to this position as you will be working with various stakeholders across R&D, obtaining and managing resources, and delivering evidence to support candidate discovery and go/no-go decisions. The PL is accountable for leading and driving teams to perform to their best. You will use your drug discovery and development experience to develop the medicine profile drawing from your scientific, development, and business knowledge or experience.

This role will provide you the opportunity to lead key activities to progress your career, these responsibilities include some of the following

Project Leadership - Develop a medicine vision and value proposition for the program

• Partner with subject matter experts to develop a plan to deliver on the medicine vision
• Lead the team to identify core risks to the delivery of the molecule and path to the medicine itself and putting into place plans to mitigate these risks
• Understanding next steps for the project and proactively engaging appropriate subject-matter experts to plan and execute
• Responsible for establishing the decision / inflection points that enable data driven project decision-making
• Define and execute the target validation, lead identification and lead optimization strategies for your projects
• Able to reconcile data; at time with conflicting data, to make informed recommendations

Matrix Leadership - Build and nurture high performing project teams

• Lead and inspire, be curious and strategic, and clearly communicate to the team and senior leaders
• Drive urgency across your teams to deliver timely data-driven project recommendations
• Identify and proactively address diminishers of team performance

Portfolio Context - Understand the strategic positioning of the program to the internal portfolio and competitor landscape

• Communicate the project value proposition relative to the GSK portfolio and competitive landscape

• Recommend when GSK should continue to invest in the medicine vision, recommend when to accelerate and when to terminate projects in the portfolio

• Solicit engagement from the internal and external scientific community, engage in robust dialogue that generates insight and advances scientific understanding of your projects

Why you?

Basic Qualifications

We are looking for professionals with these required skills to achieve our goals:

• PhD, MD, MSc, or BSc in a scientific discipline of relevance to drug discovery
• Significant years of drug discovery experience
• Extensive previous experiences of project leadership evidenced by delivering clinical candidates or justified terminations
• A demonstrable track record of developing and delivering successful outcomes through a diverse team
• A demonstrable ability to influence without authority in a highly matrixed environment

Preferred Qualifications

If you have the following characteristics, it would be a plus:

• Project leaders support GSK Research across therapy areas, therefore, drug discovery expertise in one or more of these areas is preferred: oncology (intra and extra cellular targets), neuroscience, renal, hepatic, respiratory and cellular & molecular immunology.
• Proven ability to think and plan strategically, to lead and work with members of other functions within a matrix environment.
• Familiarity with modality selection and screening strategies for discovery projects.
• Ability to integrate and lead a team of multi-discipline experts including biology, chemistry, safety assessment, computational sciences, clinical scientists, translational scientists, and others.
• Ability to align resources (people and financial), team objectives and strategies behind the vision; ensures resource gaps are identified and where possible, filled or managed.
• Create and lead an empowered, motivated team where diversity of thought is encouraged.
• Able to engage and leverage internal and external networks to drive performance and results.
• First-hand experience of all phases of early drug discovery from target validation to candidate selection.
• Understands the entirety of R&D across discovery and development.
• Experience with multiple drug modalities, primarily small molecules and biologics
• Previous leadership of project(s) that have delivered candidates for clinical progression
• Experience leading multiple projects concurrently

Why GSK?
Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases - to impact health at scale.

People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we're committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.

GSK is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), military service or any basis prohibited under federal, state or local law.

We believe in an agile working culture for all our roles. If flexibility is important to you, we encourage you to explore with our hiring team what the opportunities are.

Should you require any adjustments to our process to assist you in demonstrating your strengths and capabilities contact us on [email protected] or 0808 234 4391. The helpline is available from 8.30am to 12.00 noon Monday to Friday, during bank holidays these times and days may vary.

Please note should your enquiry not relate to adjustments, we will not be able to support you through these channels. However, we have created a UK Recruitment FAQ guide. Click the link and scroll to the Careers Section where you will find answers to multiple questions we receive .

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