Senior Director, Global Head of Sample Management

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Senior Director, Global Head of Sample Management

GSK is bringing the physical and digital sides of sample management together under a single global leader for the first time. You will lead a global organisation spanning automated storage, sample preparation and logistics, automation engineering and a digital sample platform built and owned within the function, serving the full range of modalities in our portfolio — from small molecules through large molecules, oligonucleotides and conjugates to emerging formats.

The role exists because of where discovery is going. GSK’s Lab-in-an-Automated-Loop (LIAL) programme is moving research towards continuous, increasingly autonomous design–make–test–analyse cycles. An autonomous laboratory has a hard requirement for sample registration the moment a new molecule is made, for storage that knows its own state, and for plating and delivery that an automated workflow can call without a person in the loop. Sample Management has moved from a support service to a rate-limiting dependency for the entire GSK research ecosystem.

The scale is substantial — collections numbering in the millions of samples and growing quickly in the newer modalities, high-capacity automated stores measured in millions of tubes, millions of assay-ready wells dispensed each year, and routine international distribution to partners across dozens of countries.

This is deliberately a combined role, and the combination is the point. Sample Management is already a strong, high-performing global operation. What changes is the standard it now has to meet: autonomous, closed-loop science asks for cycle times, data quality and traceability beyond what any sample function was originally designed to deliver, and reaching that standard means running the physical estate and the digital product as a single system. It needs a leader who is credible on both sides — someone who has run a high-throughput physical operation and has carried real accountability for a digital product and its data. You will report to the VP, Data, Automation and Predictive Sciences and join the DAPS leadership team.

For candidates seeking to be located at our Stevenage site, this role will temporarily be based at Stevenage. However, the Company plans to relocate its offices to Cambridge, UK. The location of this role will therefore subsequently change to Cambridge, UK in accordance with timelines to be set by the Company. The relocation is currently proposed to take effect by early 2029.

Responsibilities

This role will provide YOU the opportunity to lead key activities to progress YOUR career. These responsibilities include some of the following:

· Define and deliver a single global strategy and roadmap for physical and digital sample management across modalities and sites, aligned to LIAL and our priority technology programmes, with clear outcome measures.

· Lead leaders: the US and UK Sample Management leads, together with dedicated digital and platform capability held inside the function, as one global, service-oriented team — and build the hybrid talent that combines sample science, automation engineering, informatics and data.

· Act as accountable business and product owner for the Sample Management digital estate — registration, inventory, requesting and fulfilment, real-time tracking and analytics — built and run by a dedicated platform team inside Sample Management, with enterprise delivery and hosting partners alongside.

· Own the cross-modality sample data model — entity, batch, sample, container, aliquot, state and lineage — and decide the system of record for sample identity and lineage, so there is one source of truth.

· Deliver API- and event-driven sample services (request, reserve, prepare, deliver, return) that scientists, automated laboratories and authorised AI agents can call directly, enabling hands-off routing into closed-loop experimentation.

· Run high-throughput, modality-agnostic operations and global cold-chain logistics with measurable performance on cycle time, reliability, availability and traceability — and treat sample integrity as data, capturing storage history, time out of storage, freeze–thaw cycles and QC results against every sample.

· Own the external sample network in both directions — offsite archives, CROs, collaborators and future external execution partners — with digital manifests, identifier mapping, data return and service levels.

· Lead Sample Management’s part of major site transitions and capital programmes, including a multi-year UK relocation and the readiness of new facilities, from business case through installation, validation and handover.

· Ensure safe, compliant and inspection-ready operation — controlled and restricted materials, chain of custody, material transfer agreements, IATA and export requirements, data integrity, OT security, and business continuity for irreplaceable collections.

Why You?

Basic Qualifications

We are seeking professionals with the following required skills and qualifications:

· Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD in a life or physical science, engineering, computer science, informatics or data science, or equivalent experience.

· Extensive leadership experience in sample management, compound or biologics logistics, or laboratory operations at scale in a biopharmaceutical or comparable scientific environment.

· Demonstrated ownership of a digital product or laboratory informatics capability — inventory, registration, LIMS or equivalent — with personal accountability for roadmap, adoption and data quality, not only for using the system.

· Experience of leading leaders across multiple sites and countries, and of building teams that combine operational, engineering and digital expertise.

· Working understanding of data standards, data models and integration patterns, including APIs, events and FAIR principles.

· Experience delivering capital programmes end to end, including business case, procurement, FAT/SAT, validation and handover.

· Working knowledge of controlled and restricted materials, chain of custody, material transfer agreements, and international shipping and export requirements.

Please note: this role requires credible experience on both the physical and the digital sides of sample management. Candidates who have led operations without digital product accountability, or who have owned informatics products without running a physical sample operation, are unlikely to be a fit.

Preferred Qualifications & Skills:

Please note the following skills are not necessary, just preferred, if you do not have them, please still apply:

· Hands-on experience with high-capacity automated sample stores, acoustic dispensing and sample inventory systems.

· Familiarity with laboratory orchestration and scheduling platforms, closed-loop experimentation and agentic AI workflows.

· Product management practice: roadmaps, backlogs, user research, and measuring adoption and value.

· Experience with computerised system validation and data integrity principles (ALCOA+).

· Experience with demand forecasting, depletion prediction, inventory analytics or predictive operations.

· Experience leading an operation through a site relocation or consolidation.

· Track record of promoting, motivating and empowering others to accomplish individual, team and organisational goals.

This is a rare opportunity to build a world-class sample management functi