Head of Clinical Trial Recruitment – Workforce

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United Kingdom.

📋 Description

• Act as the strategic and operational leader within the NIHR Life Sciences Industry Hub.

• Co-create and execute a comprehensive implementation plan aimed at enhancing recruitment for commercial clinical trials throughout the NHS R&D infrastructure.

• Serve as a consultant and operational liaison between the NIHR, NHS R&D networks, and the commercial life sciences sector.

• Oversee recruitment processes that encompass vital support service agreements within the UK's commercial portfolio.

• Develop and implement national initiatives to improve recruitment efforts.

• Connect NIHR R&D, NHS infrastructure, and commercial industry sponsors to boost recruitment reliability and tackle enrolment challenges.

• Collaborate with NIHR Infrastructure and the broader research ecosystem to eliminate operational barriers between study initiation and trial execution.

• Align national workforce and recruitment strategies with the NIHR Industry Hub Commercial Portfolio Lifecycle and the national research agenda.

• Establish growth benchmarks and models to enhance year-on-year recruitment growth and ensure screening consistency.

• Set national and specialty-specific growth benchmarks for both high-volume and specialized therapeutic areas.

• Evaluate recruitment performance, including post-FPFV drop-offs, sites with zero enrolment, and phases of studies with low recruitment across NHS Trusts.

• Tackle complex recruitment obstacles, site-level capacity issues, and trial accrual failures linked to customer concerns.

• Identify constraints related to workforce, services, and infrastructure, and propose alternative and shared capacity models.

• Analyze research income recovery and its distribution among Trusts.

• Formulate and disseminate reinvestment principles with R&D departments to enhance the capacity of the clinical research workforce.

⛳️ Requirements

• Significant operational experience in facilitating clinical trial recruitment, participant retention, and achieving targets within NHS research and development or a commercial sponsor setting.

• Familiarity with the UK clinical trials lifecycle, including operational collaboration with the HRA, MHRA, and NIHR Research Delivery Network systems.

• Extensive experience in workforce-capacity planning, clinical team resourcing, or managing R&D financial recovery and reinvestment frameworks within the NHS.

• Profound understanding of post-set-up trial delivery challenges, recruitment performance analytics, and clinical research workforce dynamics across secondary, primary, and specialized care.

• Well-developed consultation and negotiation skills, with a proven track record of bridging commercial industry needs and NHS system capacities.

• Expertise in data-driven project management, including operational dashboards for monitoring recruitment velocity, identifying underperforming sites, and mitigating delivery risks.

• Preferred: Experience in leading large-scale operational changes or standardizing processes across multiple health boards or networks.

• Preferred: In-depth knowledge of the regulatory landscape and technical assurance requirements related to ATMPs, oncology, or decentralized clinical trials across multiple settings.

🏝️ Benefits

• Employees have the option to work remotely.

• Commitment to equal-opportunity employment.