King's College London

About us

The Health Research Development team supports research income generation activity across the four health faculties at King’s. Our team focuses on helping faculties deliver King’s health research priorities. 

Our work is enormously varied and ranges from supporting the implementation of major organisational strategic priorities, to supporting individuals seeking their first research grant. We help group leaders, departments, schools and faculties develop their plans for grant acquisition, provide insight into funder priorities and processes, and support the development of grant proposals from concept, to drafting, to interview preparation. We also run a variety of internal funding streams and selection processes to manage funder application caps.  

About the role

This role is one of two posts supporting the world leading Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, working closely with academic staff to understand their research funding goals, encouraging and supporting applications to appropriate opportunities from concept to award offer and managing internal selection processes. Using your professional services and academic networks you will work with colleagues across the University to maximise opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Working with the research development team, you will deliver training activities for academic staff that increase awareness of research funding streams and capability to apply.

To thrive in this role you’ll bring a strong grounding in a relevant field of research with a good understanding or how health research funding works and experience of working in a research funding environment. You will be solution focussed, with an organised and adaptable approach and be able to quickly understand complex concepts. And you will bring the motivation and personal qualities to engage with senior academic staff and professional service colleagues to understand their goals and challenges and help address them. In return we offer an unbeatable learning environment, with opportunities to develop your career in a collaborative and highly valued team.

This is a full time post (35 hours per week) reflecting our workload, but there may be some scope for reduced hours on enquiry. The role requires a blend of working closely with scientific staff in person and across our campuses, alongside opportunities for remote working.

For an informal conversation, please contact Alasdair Rankin, Director of Research Development (Health) alasdair.rankin@kcl.ac.uk

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1.      Graduate degree or equivalent experience in a subject relevant to health sciences

2.      Experience of working in an academic research or research funding environment, with a good understanding of the health research funding landscape; and of the research development pipeline from concept development to application and funder review processes

3.      Excellent communicator, able to interpret and explain complex information with clarity and confidence. Excellent listening skills, able to quickly understand and explore key scientific concepts.

4.      Excellent writing skills, with demonstrable experience of delivering clear, structured outputs that deliver results. Excellent qualitative and quantitative analytical and problem solving skills, with a solution focused approach.

5.      An engaging and inquisitive individual who thrives on building trusting relationships with experts and stakeholders at all levels. Customer focussed mind-set, motivated to help academics find timely solutions to their problems. Confident supporting individual and group conversations that deliver insight.

6.      Builds and maintains good working relationships with colleagues to foster team spirit, commitment to the team and achievement of shared goals

7.      Comfortable working independently, knowing when to ask permission and when to inform. Comfortable with ambiguity and able to achieve goals through influence and negotiation in a complex organisational environment.

8.      High level of work organisation, self-motivation, resilience and determination, drive for performance and improvement, and flexibility in approach and attitude.

Desirable criteria

1.      PhD or equivalent research experience in a subject relevant to health sciences

2.      Experience of running scientific peer review processes

3.      Experience of contributing to strategic projects

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘ How we Recruit’ pages.

Interviews are due to be held in the week of the 12th of January. For an informal conversation, please contact Alasdair Rankin, Director of Research Development (Health)  alasdair.rankin@kcl.ac.uk