JOB DESCRIPTION
Department/Division/Faculty: Enterprise Division
Campus/Location: Hybrid Role – Working across South Kensington and White City Campuses.
Job Family/Level: Professional Services Level 6
Responsible to: Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise)
Line management for: Director of Entrepreneurship, Cross Faculty Director (Commercialisation), Investment manager
Key working Relationships (Internal): Co-Director Enterprise (Corporate Partnerships), Faculty Deans, Academic Heads of Departments and senior academic faculty representatives (including Associate Deans for Enterprise or equivalent), White City Strategy Director, Provost, Vice Provost (Education), President, Public Affairs, VP Advancement, Finance.
Key Working Relationships (External): Professional service organisations; public bodies; relevant government departments; other HEIs; overseas organisations, investment fund and investor community.
Contract type: Permanent
Purpose of the Post
Imperial College London’s Enterprise remit has expanded significantly, and this role focuses exclusively on Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship. The post holder will work closely with the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise), the Co-Director of Enterprise (Corporate Partnerships), and the Research and Enterprise Operating Officer to drive a cohesive strategic direction across the division. This role is central to delivering the ambitions of Imperial’s Science for Humanity strategy, which seeks to enable talent, power research, and amplify impact by unlocking the full potential of science to serve society.
The post holder will lead the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Teams, continuously innovating to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and service delivery across Imperial. In alignment with Imperial’s strategic initiatives, the post holder will:
- Lead the identification, protection, and commercial exploitation of intellectual property arising from academic research. This includes managing patent portfolios, negotiating licensing agreements, and developing institutional IP policies.
- Support the creation and growth of spinout companies by academic founders. Provide strategic oversight of equity management, seed funding, and governance structures, while facilitating access to mentoring, incubation, and investment.
- Lead on relationships with key external stakeholders—including venture capitalists, angel investors, corporate innovation teams, and experienced spinout founders—to accelerate the commercial development of university technologies.
- Strengthen the university’s internal innovation culture by ensuring commercialisation processes are fit for purpose, enhancing service delivery, and supporting researcher and student entrepreneurship. Deliver training, resources, and strategic initiatives that foster a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable innovation ecosystem.
This role plays a critical function in Imperial’s innovation ecosystem; advancing the translational impact of Imperial’s research, facilitating the progression of scientific discoveries from conceptual development to societal application, in alignment with the College’s commitment to delivering research excellence that addresses global challenges and benefits humanity.
Key Responsibilities
Management
- Working with the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) and academic leads to create and implement a 5-year strategy for the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship (including Hackspace and Incubator strategy), setting competitive performance targets and trajectories for key business development metrics, and delivering against those targets.
- Take overall responsibility for ensuring that all aspects of relationships in Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship are responsive and well managed, establishing and responding to systematic client and user feedback.
- Set quality standards across the full range of services provided by the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Teams and ensure that they are adhered to.
- Effectively lead, motivate, and manage the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship team.
- Champion the implementation and adoption of ICT and digital workflow tools to maximise efficiency, intelligence sharing, and best practise development across the Commericialisaiton and Entrepreneurship Teams and interfacing activities across the College.
- Champion the implementation of ethical reviews, ensuring that ethical considerations are taken into account before and during the development of external partnerships, including conflicts of interest, anti-bribery and relationship reviews.
- Provide relevant expert advice and guidance to other areas and functions in the College.
Liaison and Influence
- Build and maintain excellent working relationships with staff throughout the College who are functionally aligned with the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Teams.
- Supporting the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) to inform and influence policy and strategy.
- Supporting the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) and relevant Colleagues to inform and influence strategic directions.
- Sit on College committees where relevant to manage the interface between Enterprise and the relevant function, this includes UREB and EAG.
- Interact with external bodies to represent the College’s Enterprise perspective and promote its profile.
- Represent Imperial in relevant external special interest groups.
- Grow links between the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Team and the many related support services at Imperial
- Oversee the relationship with the Imperial Venture Fund.
Finance and Resource Management
Alongside the Co-Director of Enterprise (Corporate Partnerships) and Research and Enterprise Operations Officer, the postholder will:
- Support the preparation and submission of the Enterprise strategy and budget to the Vice Provost (Research and Enterprise) for the annual Planning Round.
- Be responsible for meeting key business development targets on time and on budget, including any surplus from venture and programme activity.
- Provide information for external reporting as required (e.g. HEFCE returns).
- Direct management of the approved headcount within the Commercialisation Team.
Analysis, Reporting & Documentation
- Review the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Team performance and benchmark against leading practice in business development and commercialisation in the UK and elsewhere.
- Identify appropriate improvements in the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Team and business development processes and structures and incorporate where appropriate.
- Champion the use of Business Intelligence services to analyse where Imperial has competitive advantage in research and Commercialisation.
- Report and represent the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Team and when needed the Enterprise Division at governance fora.
Customer Service
- Initiate and manage processes to ensure internal (e.g. faculties, academics, management) and external (e.g. investor, founder, government) customers’ needs are met, championing development of innovative solutions for improvement where required.
- Establish and communicate clear expectations for Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Team and founders.
- Improve and maintain service levels.
- Ensure compliance of the Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship Team’s function across Imperial with internal and external quality metrics.
Continuous Improvement
- Continuously review the team’s, wider Division and Imperial’s performance and monitor external benchmarks to maintain a continuous improvement ethos.
- Cultivate a positive attitude toward new ideas and approaches.
- Implement improvements in processes and structures where appropriate, for example through workflow and standard operating procedure changes.
- Observe and comply with all Imperial policies and regulations, including Health and Safety, Data Protection, Equal Opportunities, Financial Regulations, Imperial Expectations, Information Technology, Private Engagements and Register of Interests, and Smoking.
- Undertake specific safety responsibilities relevant to individual roles, as set out on the College Website Health and Safety Structure and Responsibilities.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
All of the following criteria are considered essential unless otherwise noted.
Education
- A good undergraduate level degree, or equivalent qualification, in science, technology or medicine.
- Higher level degree in science, technology or business or relevant equivalent qualifications and/or CPD. (Desirable)
- Track record of self-improvement through professional development, executive education and training. (Desirable)
Experience
- Substantial experience of client engagement at Director-level in large, technology-led, corporations, typically from representing the interests of a major supplier of a product of service.
- Substantial commercial and operational leadership experience from directing teams and managing change in complex organisations.
- Track record of managing through influence in complex (matrix) structures.
- Experience of managing substantial budgets and resources. An understanding of the academic environment, preferably gained through previous experience of working within a Higher Education Institution.
Skills
- Commercial acumen – capable of negotiating contracts in a Business-to-Business setting, identifying competitive advantage and converting this into bid success.
- Immediately credible with academics – able to appreciate the different drivers between academic research and translation.
- Strong relationship and communication skills to influence and effect change with internal and external senior stakeholders.
- Political acumen – ability to generate consensus across complex college structures.
- Strategic top-down approach coupled with ability to prioritise and strong delivery focus.
- Well-developed report writing and presentation skills suitable for very senior audiences.
- Self-directed – able to work with minimum supervision and oversee several complex projects in parallel.
- Leadership skills – performance management; ability to develop, correct and direct.
- Planning and organisational skills at team, project and budget levels.
- Service management skills – ability to organise and develop areas of work, to define service objectives and to measure performance against these.
Further Information
Please note that job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, and the post-holder may be required to undertake other duties, which are broadly in line with the above key responsibilities.
Our values are at the root of everything we do and everyone in our community is expected to demonstrate Imperial:
- Respect
- Collaboration
- Excellence
- Integrity
- Innovation
Employees are also required to comply with all Imperial policies and regulations. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to eliminating discrimination and to creating an inclusive working environment for all. We encourage candidates to apply irrespective of age, disability, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion and belief, gender reassignment, sex, or sexual orientation. You can read more about our commitment on our webpages.
www.imperial.ac.uk 
/prod01/channel_3/media/migration/administration-and-support-services/mcdermott-alistair-2_1601559985643_x4.jpg)
/prod01/channel_3/media/images/people-list/Alex-Elkins_Headshot_Imperial-Enterprise_500X500.png)
