Principal Scientist, Operational Excellence

Your impact starts here As Principal Scientist, Operational Excellence, you'll drive the continuous improvement of how science is delivered across the Target Identification & Maturation (TIM) department. By optimising workflows, strengthening quality systems, and leading cross-functional improvement initiatives, you will enable scientists to focus on breakthrough discovery while ensuring efficient, scalable, and high-quality execution. Your work will build the operational foundations that accelerate innovation, enhance collaboration, and ultimately help bring new treatments to patients faster.

What you’ll bring You are a scientifically accomplished and collaborative researcher with deep expertise in operational excellence, experimental workflow optimisation and high-quality scientific execution. You combine technical credibility with strong stakeholder engagement, structured problem-solving and the ability to influence research strategy, technology development and scientific outcomes.

To succeed in this role, you will have:

A PhD or Master’s degree in molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, or a related scientific discipline.

Typically, 7 to 10 years of pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry experience, with demonstrated expertise in operational excellence, experimental workflow optimization, and/or target identification and validation.

Strong knowledge of experimental design and statistics, data interpretation, and quality systems, with the ability to ensure reliable, reproducible, and decision-grade scientific outputs.

Proven ability to apply governance and compliance principles (e.g., documentation, traceability, control strategies) and to embed quality-by-design practices into day-to-day operations.

Solid experience and demonstrated success in driving adoption of new ways of working, including leading change management activities, embedding standardized processes, and achieving sustained impact across scientific teams.

Demonstrated capability to mentor and develop scientific colleagues, build effective cross-functional collaborations, and communicate complex scientific and operational concepts to multidisciplinary stakeholders.

Experience working with external partners/vendors, including defining scientifically aligned requirements, assessing quality/performance, and enabling delivery of interoperable, interpretable, and traceable data outputs (FAIR practices preferred).Useful, but not essential:

Certification in continuous improvement methodologies is an advantage.

Aligned to the responsibilities of this role, you will be able to operate with a high degree of scientific independence, serving as a recognized leader in scientific operational excellence—shaping both strategic and day-to-day operational decisions that enable novel therapeutic targets to progress through the research pipeline.

What you’ll do As Principal Scientist, Operational Excellence, you will be a scientific leader within the In Vitro Science team, driving the development and implementation of advanced experimental approaches that support target discovery. You will partner with TIM scientific and operational leaders to standardise and streamline processes, improve the reliability of experimental execution, and strengthen governance and performance metrics, while ensuring compliance with relevant requirements.

Through this work, you will enable teams to generate high-quality data for decision-making, accelerate target discovery and validation across the research portfolio, and help shape the future direction of in vitro capabilities within TIM. You will also mentor colleagues, influence scientific strategy, and build internal and cross-functional collaborations that increase research impact.

Your responsibilities…