Director of Commercial & Funding Operations

Application Deadline: 7 November 2026

Department: Procurement and Contracts

Employment Type: Permanent

Location: London

Compensation: £135,000 / year

Description

Key Responsibilities

• Work with Programme Directors from the early stages of their funding programme, helping them work out how to reach the right research communities, structure funding opportunities, assess proposals, and build a coherent portfolio.
• Lead the design and delivery of funding calls, including eligibility criteria, guidance, timetables, applicant communications, reviewer processes, evaluation, and decision records.
• Oversee the route from a selected proposal to a signed award, bringing together due diligence, budgets, approvals, milestones, and commercial terms so that work can begin as soon as possible.
• Help set ARIA’s approach to sourcing and supplier management, and support important or difficult negotiations, supplier issues, and renewals.
• Work with ARIA’s CFO and Finance team to maintain ARIA’s grants and commercial governance approach, including policies, delegations, and risk management practices.
• Set direction and priorities across the team and ensure it has the resources, capacity, and support it needs to help the organisation deliver.
• Build good working relationships with government stakeholders and commercial teams.
• Build and maintain practical templates, playbooks, guidance, records, escalation routes, and systems that make the function easier to use and allow a small team to scale.
• Give ARIA’s Executive team a clear view of funding and sourcing pipelines, workload, commitments, risks, and delays, and use that information to help inform organisational planning, prioritisation, and resourcing.
• Bring together the right commercial, legal, financial, and programme expertise for unusual or strategic transactions that do not fit a standard funding or sourcing route.
• Build trusted, early partnerships with Programme Directors and colleagues, bringing commercial insight into the design of ambitious programmes rather than acting as a late-stage gatekeeper.
• Apply imaginative, proportionate commercial judgement to remove unnecessary friction, solve complex problems, and enable pace - while maintaining fairness, value for money, compliance, and public trust.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• You have led a sizeable or complex funding, investment, procurement, commercial, or comparable capital-deployment operation, and can point to ways you made it more effective and easier to navigate.
• You are a strong leader who is able to set a clear vision, delegate effectively, coach people through difficult judgement calls, and make sensible trade-offs across competing priorities.
• You have a good understanding of the full funding or investment lifecycle: researching the market, engaging the right communities, shaping an opportunity, running structured or competitive selection processes, making well-documented decisions, and taking projects through due diligence to agreement.
• You have a good understanding of end-to-end procurement and sourcing, from refining an early operational need through market engagement, supplier selection, negotiation, contract, handover, performance, and renewal.
• You can turn governance and compliance requirements into clear, proportionate, and workable policies, controls, and guidance.
• You have good judgement and are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information, explaining trade-offs, providing constructive challenge to colleagues, and knowing when to bring in specialist support.
• You are commercially astute. You can test assumptions, navigate novel award and contracting structures, and negotiate credibly and effectively with third parties.
• You are a clear communicator who can explain complex funding, commercial, and governance issues in simple, practical terms.
• You have a good-humoured, low-ego, and hands-on approach to work, and are comfortable moving between strategy and practical problem-solving in a scaling organisation.

• You have significant experience spanning more than one of the following areas: R&D funding; strategic procurement; complex supplier management; venture capital; investment operations; or public-sector commercial work.
• You have direct experience involving government grants or commercial standards and stewardship of public money.
• You have experience using data, automation, or AI tools to reduce administration and improve operational decision-making.

Benefits

• 27 days annual leave provision, with the option to buy/sell additional days
• Supportive environment for learning and development opportunities
• Enhanced family leave arrangements
• A free and confidential 24/7 employee assistance programme
• Life Assurance
• 2 days of paid volunteer days
• 5% defined contribution pension scheme with Smart Pension
• Cycle to Work scheme
• An excellent office location in Kings X, London