SENIOR LEAD, CLUSTERS

ABOUT PLEXAL

The Role’s Purpose

We’re looking for a Senior Innovation Lead who has the capability and desire to shape the future of the UK’s place-based innovation landscape.
This individual will play an important role in delivering excellence and growth in place-based innovation. We are a rapidly growing team and are actively looking to recruit exceptional individuals who want to work in an adaptive, fast moving, collaborative environment.
At Plexal, the Senior Lead is a pivotal role, typically with either primary responsibility for the day to day delivery of a service line with <£1m of annual turnover or joint responsibility for a larger service line.
This role can be based from our London, Cheltenham or Manchester office and will require regular travel to client sites.

What You’ll Do
Your key responsibilities will include:

• Product development and improvement of the innovation clusters toolset
• Execution of excellent quality delivery, producing and enabling work that exceeds client expectations and leads the market
• Detailed planning of activities and deliverables
• Assurance of effective programme and project management including ongoing revenue and cost management
• Line and project management of delivery teams
• Onboarding new team members, and the identification and proactive management of skills interventions required by team members
• Close joint working with Account Teams, Progammes and Consulting delivery units, HR, and Finance
• Effective upward management of senior external and internal stakeholders

You will be working across our current capabilities, including:

• The delivery of ambitious but practical strategies with regions developing technology led innovation clusters that cause real, transformational change and productivity growth
• The rapid formation and validation of commercial models for new cluster ventures
• The delivery of detailed commercial business cases for large scale investments combining real estate and programme delivery
• The development and implementation of leading operating models that push the boundaries of what an innovation cluster can deliver
• A forward thinking approach to benefits realisation that unlocks investment, motivates key stakeholders to actively participate, acts as a robust evidence base and informs delivery planning

Your Skills

• You’ll likely have 10+ years of experience working with a leading consultancy or similar, in which you will have held senior delivery positions
• You will excel at motivating and supporting teams to deliver high quality results
• You will be able to produce high quality and accurate written work including presentations, reports, and business cases, suitable for advising and making recommendations to senior leaders, using your own intuition and judgement
• Experience in business case development with a solid grasp of the requirements of the five case model
• Commercial awareness and an aptitude for building relationships, nurturing opportunities and structuring mutually beneficial business partnerships
• Experience of the place-based innovation policy and funding landscape including levelling up, shared prosperity and strength in places funds
• Experience in designing and implementing operating models and new venture creation
• Understanding of UK technology led regional development strategies and international benchmarks
• Experience in strategic project developent including working with developers and local authorities to manage large scale projects across Economic Development and Strategic Development teams
• Strategic awareness across the emerging technology sphere to provide an outside-in perspective to clients with regards to emerging market needs, trends, opportunities and technologies of interest to explore
• Experience of working successfully through collaboration, contributing to the success of a delivery team
• Deep experience in an innovation, startup, research or technology background, with a passion about emerging technology and some domain expertise or interest in technology policy

Who You Are

• You are committed to the delivery of excellent quality work
• You enjoy a balance of strategic thinking and new product design together with rolling your sleeves up and getting great work done as part of a highly capable team with a flat hierarchy
• Ability to thrive in ambiguous scenarios
• Ability to work in a high-pace environment

This role will require regular business travel across all Plexal sites as well as nationally to client sites.

Due to the nature of this position, our work, and our client engagements, you must be willing and eligible to achieve a minimum of SC clearance. To qualify for SC clearance, you must be a British Citizen or have resided in the UK for the last 5 years with no extensive periods outside of the UK. Pre-existing SC welcome.

For more information about clearance eligibility, please see https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/united-kingdom-security-vetting