BioFAIR Senior Technical Project Manager

Applications are invited for a Senior Technical Project Manager to join the BioFAIR Hub at the Earlham Institute, based in Norwich, UK.

Background:

BioFAIR is a new UK government-funded investment of £34m to develop and operate a federated digital research infrastructure connecting existing life sciences infrastructures which will largely be assembled through the integration of existing services, resources and knowledge.

BioFAIR is funded for five years and will focus on four core capabilities: Data Commons, Method Commons, Knowledge Centre, and Community Centre.

The BioFAIR’s Commons will be shared places, built to incorporate FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and allow researchers to collaborate and connect with colleagues to work on research projects.

BioFAIR will operate as a Hub and Spoke organisation. The BioFAIR Hub will be based at the Earlham Institute, who will be responsible for coordination, establishing and managing delivery partnerships and governance.

The role: 

The BioFAIR Senior Technical Project Manager will provide the project management leadership for the initiative and will ensure the establishment of the structure, staffing, partnerships and governance to transition to sustainable long-term success. 

They will establish and run the processes to select and commission the spokes (delivery partners). They will coordinate the Delivery Team and embed within it a community-led culture of collaboration and collective responsibility. 

Working with the Director and Architect, they will provide the long term leadership to enable and inspire the BioFAIR community to assemble a digital research infrastructure that meets the broad needs of life science researchers and delivers the objectives of the business case. BioFAIR is seeking to establish a team-first culture, so the Senior Technical Project Manager will need experience of working in agile environments. 

They will be responsible for ensuring the BioFAIR community is focused on incremental, continuous delivery of value rather than checking off lists of scheduled, predetermined deliverable items. 

The objectives of the BioFAIR project are: 

• Culture change: To drive adoption of FAIR principles and open data across the UK life sciences to provide high quality FAIR datasets ready for uptake and reuse. 
• Defragmentation: To increase the coordination, collaboration and cohesiveness of the UK’s life sciences related data landscape, enhancing its effectiveness and efficiency. 
• Access: To enable democratised access to data and data methods within UK life sciences via a national capability. 
• Skills: To attract, develop and retain excellent research data management skills and capacity for UK life sciences. 
• Data reuse: To improve the efficiency of research and enabling new research by increased re-use of data in the life sciences. 

The ideal candidate:

The post holder will have a degree in a relevant discipline and a proven ability to build, grow and retain high performing distributed teams. It is essential that the successful candidate has a proven track record as an effective leader. They must also be committed to the principles of FAIR and open science data sharing. 

It is advantageous if the post holder has the ability to think strategically and to develop multi-year plans in a dynamic technology environment. As this is a key leadership role in the Hub, on average the post holder would be expected to spend at least one day a week at the Earlham Institute. 

Download recruitment pack

Additional information: 

Salary on appointment will be within the range £70,560 - £88,250 per annum depending on qualifications and experience. This is a full-time post for a contract of 48 months – although full-time hours are available, applications from those interested in working part-time hours (or alternative working patterns) are also welcomed.       

Interviews will take place on Wednesday 26th February 2025.

For further information and details of how to apply, please visit our website http://jobs.earlham.ac.uk/ or contact the Human Resources team on 01603 450814 or nbi.recruitment@nbi.ac.uk quoting reference 1004830. 

This role meets the criteria for a visa application, and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply. Please contact the Human Resources Team if you have any questions regarding your application or visa options.

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.

The closing date for applications is Tuesday 18 February