Purpose of the Post
As Senior Contracts Manager, the successful candidate will play a central role across the organisation, supporting a portfolio of high‑profile public health initiatives that strengthen the UK’s health data infrastructure and enable cutting‑edge research nationally and internationally.
They will work closely with teams across HDR UK and collaborate regularly with external partners – including universities, research organisations, funders, government bodies and industry – to deliver complex data infrastructure and research programmes. The role requires someone who is confident operating at pace, navigating diverse stakeholder environments, and taking a pragmatic, solutions‑focused approach to contractual challenges.
The ideal candidate will share our values, demonstrate strong influencing and collaboration skills, and bring sound judgement to resolving complex issues. They will be comfortable working in a fast‑moving environment and committed to enabling impactful, trustworthy use of health data for public benefit.
Main Responsibilities
Reporting to the Associate Director of Contracts, Procurement and Policy, this fast-paced role will provide key support for HDR UK’s strategic priorities in the categories below:
1. Contracting
· Manage a large and varied contract portfolio. HDR UK’s Contracts Team handles a wide variety of agreements including but not limited to incoming and outgoing grant awards, services agreements, research collaboration/consortium agreements, studentships, external secondments, data agreements, IP licences/assignments, heads of terms, and revenue sharing arrangements.
· Draft a variety of agreements, using internal templates as well as bespoke drafting as appropriate, and critically review external contract drafts, ensuring terms are in line with HDR UK’s approved positions.
· Draft and lead negotiations on complex agreements such as high-value, complex multi-stage services, research and research data infrastructure programmes, multi-tiered funding structures,
and data agreements with support from the Associate Director of Contracts, Procurement and Policy and external counsel as needed.
· Work closely with senior internal stakeholders to advise on contractual models for the development and provision of existing and new research, research infrastructure, and data focused services programmes.
· Advise HDR UK staff and stakeholders on contract terms, contracting approach, risk management, and contract processes.
· Ensure that contracts and grants comply with HDR UK’s policies, funder, legislative, and regulatory requirements, and sector best practice.
· Work closely with HDR UK’s procurement team to draft appropriate agreements in relation to the procurement of high value and complex goods and services.
· Work closely with the HDR UK Information Governance team to draft and advise on data access agreements.
· Support the Associate Director of Contracts Procurement and Policy in advising HDR UK senior leadership on contractual considerations of strategic programme development, including but not limited to industry partnerships.
· Stay current regarding relevant legal and regulatory developments, particularly in the areas of data privacy, charity regulations, and relevant contract case law.
· Ensure accurate records are kept regarding the contracting process and contract documentation, including maintaining the contracts register.
2. Relationship Management
· Build and maintain excellent relationships with key internal and external stakeholders to deliver HDR UK’s priorities in a timely and efficient manner. Work in partnership with stakeholders to resolve contractual challenges taking an enabling and solutions focused approach.
· Communicate deadlines, contract terms, and commercial/funding positions to internal and external stakeholders.
· Interact with and assist external legal counsel at the direction of the Associate Director of Contracts, Procurement and Policy, and the Director of Legal, Trust and Ethics.
· Work closely with and mentor the HDR UK Contracts Officer. Line management responsibility may be within future scope of the role.
3. Process Development and Training
· Work with the Associate Director of Contracts, Procurement and Policy and Contracts Officer to maintain and improve HDR UK’s existing contracting processes, policies, and templates.
· Assist with the development of policies adjacent to HDR UK’s contracting policies as needed (e.g. IP, finance, procurement, due diligence).
· Assist with establishing best practices for contracting and communicating those best practices to internal stakeholders, including developing and presenting training materials.
4. Risk Management
· Undertake due diligence and risk management activities in relation to third parties and projects in order to identify risk, advise on appropriate mitigations, and use judgement to escalate as necessary in accordance with HDR UK’s policies and processes.
· Assist the Associate Director of Contracts, Procurement and Policy to advise and report to the HDR UK Senior Leadership and Board of Trustees on key contracting and risk management issues.
5. Other
· Work across all teams at HDR UK to contribute to projects or activities as the need arises.
· Deputise for the Associate Director of Contracts, Procurement and Policy on contracting matters as needed.
Experience
Required
· A minimum of five years’ experience in drafting, reviewing and negotiating a wide range of contractual agreements with a variety of counterparties including industry, academia, charity and public sector.
· Demonstrable significant experience in industry sponsored, life sciences and health data focused research agreements.
· Proven leadership experience, with a strong track record of providing strategic direction and shaping policy or process development.
Desirable
· Experience working within the UK Higher Education sector or the NHS.
· Experience in mentoring and/or line management of contracts professionals.
· Some knowledge of UK public procurement regulations
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.
Purpose of the post
HDR UK is looking for an experienced system operations and data manager to support its work setting up the Dementia Trials Accelerator. The Dementia Trials Accelerator is expanding the opportunities available for people at risk of or diagnosed with early-stage dementia to participate in research. With promising new treatments on the horizon for neurodegenerative conditions, it’s crucial the UK improves the infrastructure for clinical trials to ensure people don’t miss out. Driven by the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) and Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Dementia Trials Accelerator will tackle the historically low numbers of people enrolled into dementia trials in the UK.
As an integral member of the Dementia Trials Accelerator team, the Operations and Data Manager will work within trusted research environments, participant contact systems and with our many partners. Defining appropriate data formats for secure data transfer and ensuring those transfer mechanisms are working on a day-to-day basis with data arriving from all partners, being mapped and formatted correctly. Diagnosing and debugging day to day integration and data issues working with our partners and technical teams.
The role is highly collaborative and would suit and individual familiar and comfortable working with IT systems, integrations and sensitive data as part of a small team who collaborate with many external partners and stakeholders.
Main responsibilities
a) Data & Systems Integration
- Definition and subsequent iteration of data formats to be exchanged between systems
- Working with the technical team to ensure system integrations are setup and operating correctly with appropriate levels of security and encryption
- Ensuring data exchange processes are clearly documented and support data security and integrity
- Document data backup and recovery strategy and ensure it is implemented
- Mapping data received to OMOP common data model working in partnership with OMOP expert partner to ensure Cohort Discovery is operational
- Document data risks in the system along with appropriate mitigations
- Support integration work to securely exchange participant related data across the partners involved in the Dementia Trials Accelerator
- Ensure smooth construction and versioning of the Dementia Trials Accelerator cohort dataset.
b) Systems & Operational management
- Support the day-to-day smooth running of the systems and integrations that underpin the Dementia Trials Accelerator participant signup and appointment process, ensuring a quality service is provided
- Ensure data is flowing correctly between systems at all times and debug as necessary.
c) Partnership working
- The Dementia Trials Accelerator is a highly distributed and collaborative team, working in partnership to deliver
- Work with standards bodies and partners to drive forward new representations of data and variables where not already available
- Work in partnership with technologists and data infrastructure specialists across the Institute and with a range of external partners.
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.