Senior Principal - Development & CMO Digital & Tech Strategy

Job description

GSK Development and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Digital and Technology’s mission is to disrupt and transform the way GSK thinks about, generates and submits evidence to radically accelerate the delivery of medicines and vaccines for our patients and participants. We act as a strategic thought partner for the Development Operations and CMO organisations, bringing together diverse stakeholders to radically transform and connect siloed processes using innovative and integrated technology. Your role As the Senior Principal, Strategy you will be a pivotal partner for the Development and CMO Digital and Technology leadership team, responsible for both shaping our strategic agenda and driving its execution to help us radically accelerate the delivery of medicines and vaccines. You will probe and clarify strategic choices, lead analysis on critical business problems, and own high-priority initiatives from concept to completion. Alongside this, you will serve as a chief of staff to the leadership team - acting as the throughline across our planning cycles, governance, and leadership sessions to ensure strategy translates into decisive action. You will work closely with the R&D Digital and Technology Portfolio team, ensuring their capabilities and processes are leveraged in service of our objectives. This role requires you to move seamlessly between high-level strategic thinking and the hands-on work of keeping a complex leadership team focused, aligned, and moving forward. Your responsibilities • Drive and Facilitate the Leadership Team's Strategic Agenda: Act as the throughline for the leadership team's strategic agenda - ensuring what gets discussed becomes decided, and what gets decided gets done. You will own the meeting rhythm: setting agendas, ensuring pre-reads are in place, and working with teams across the department to drive actions to completion between sessions. • Lead High-Priority & Cross-Cutting Strategic Initiatives: Take direct ownership of ambiguous, high-impact projects, particularly those that cut across multiple programmes and teams. You will be responsible for the full lifecycle: shaping the hypothesis, conducting analysis, building consensus, and delivering integrated solutions that drive our transformation forward. • Co-lead Annual Planning: In partnership with the Strategy Director, co-lead the annual planning cycle - driving both the OKR-setting process and the investment planning process, ensuring the two are aligned and that clear trade-off decisions are made. • Build and Communicate a Shared Strategic Narrative: Own the communications that bring our strategy to life across the department  - translating leadership decisions and strategic priorities into clear, compelling messages for all staff, so that everyone understands where we are going and how their work connects to it. • Partner with the R&D Digital and Technology Portfolio Team: Work closely with the Portfolio team to ensure the operational processes that underpin both our strategic programmes and the day-to-day running of the department are effective and efficient — identifying where things aren't working and driving improvements that help the department deliver against its objectives. Why you? Basic Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a scientific area (e.g. computer science, engineering, mathematics), or related quantitative discipline. • 15+ Experience in technology strategy, within a large-scale technology organisation, a corporate strategy function, or a management consulting firm. • Experience supporting or operating as chief of staff to a senior leadership team, including owning meeting rhythms, governance forums, and cross-team action tracking. • Relevant experience in the life sciences industry. We are looking for professionals with the following capabilities: • Senior Stakeholder Management: Proven ability to act as a trusted partner to leaders, building strong relationships, providing candid advice, and facilitating high-stakes discussions to drive alignment and clear decisions. • Structured Problem-Solving and Analysis: A highly analytical mindset with the ability to take ambiguous, complex business problems, structure them, and drive them to a concrete solution through hands-on analysis and project management. • Exceptional Communication and Synthesis: The ability to synthesise complex information into clear, concise narratives for a range of audiences, from executive leadership to all staff. You can distil the "so what" and make strategy feel relevant and actionable at every level. Preferred Qualifications: • R&D Domain Knowledge: Understanding of the pharmaceutical R&D value chain, from drug discovery and clinical development through to regulatory submission. • Agile Ways of Working: Familiarity with Agile principles and ways of working (e.g. Scrum, SAFe), with the ability to operate effectively within an organisation that runs on agile rhythms. • AI-Augmented Working: Practical experience applying AI tools to accelerate strategic and analytical work, and a track record of helping others do the same — for example, driving adoption of AI tools that enhance how product owners and delivery teams operate day-to-day. Skills Change Management, Compliance Risk Management, Dependency Analysis, Executive Reports, Financial Acumen, Portfolio Performance Management, Portfolio Prioritization, Problem Solving, Project Managemen