Director of Commercial & Funding Operations @ ARIA

Salary: £135,000 Bonus: Discretionary Location: Kings X, London; Tues - Thurs (3 days) at HQ, Monday + Friday, anywhere Employment Type: Permanent, full time ARIA is a R&D funding agency created to unlock technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone. We fund scientists and engineers to pursue research at the edge of the possible. From climate change to AI, society faces enormous challenges and opportunities that can be uniquely addressed by science and technology. ARIA was created to activate the UK’s world-class R&D in new ways, so we can meet these head on. Our success is shaped by one question: how will ARIA transform the lives of the UK’s future generations? Whether that’s a life-changing new technology or a burgeoning new industry, it should be obvious that ARIA played a catalytic role.

• Role Summary As a Director of Commercial & Funding Operations, you will work with Programme Directors to turn scientific and technical theses into funding strategies, calls, selection processes, and signed awards; set ARIA’s approach to sourcing and supplier management; and oversee the policies and processes that support compliance with public-sector grant, procurement, and commercial requirements.
• Reporting directly to our COO, you will lead the function, strengthen the systems and processes it relies on, and bring clear judgement to the novel or complex situations that arise in ARIA’s work.
• This role would suit someone who has led a complex funding, investment, procurement, or commercial operation and enjoys moving between strategy and practical delivery.
• What You’ll Do The scope of the role will evolve as ARIA continues to grow, but will broadly involve the following: 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.