Business Development Lead - GLP-1

Waters Corporation; Wilmslow; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Waters Corporation seeks a strategic, commercially minded Business Development leader to drive the GLP-1 market strategy and cross‑divisional product alignment. You will partner with global teams to translate customer insights into scalable growth across LC, MS, Columns, and Software.

Initially focused on launching Waters' global GLP-1 market strategy, the role evolves into broader development of strategic opportunities, partnerships, and market entry initiatives, with travel up to 25–35% and

Qualifications

• Experience in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, analytical instrumentation, or life sciences.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical workflows, particularly biologics, peptides, or GLP-1 therapeutics.
• Experience in product management, strategic marketing, scientific marketing, business development, or commercial strategy.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional initiatives.
• Experience working across global organizations.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and influencing skills.
• Strong analytical and business case development capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead Waters' global GLP-1 market development strategy.
• Develop market segmentation, sizing, competitive intelligence, and growth strategies for GLP-1.
• Identify future adjacent market opportunities and develop recommendations for portfolio expansion.
• Develop strategic business cases supporting investment decisions and growth initiatives.
• Establish relationships with key pharmaceutical innovators, CDMOs, CROs, and opinion leaders.
• Translate VOC insights into actionable business opportunities.
• Coordinate cross-functional activities across Portfolio Management, R&D, Product Marketing, and more.
• Define and track KPIs: market penetration, pipeline, revenue growth, market share.

Skills

Strategic market development

Cross-functional leadership

Product management

Strategic marketing

Business development

Commercial strategy

Analytical skills

Communication & influencing

Global collaboration

VOC insights translation

Education

Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Life Sciences, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Engineering, or related scientific discipline

Advanced degree (PhD, MS, MBA) preferred

Job description

Overview

Waters is seeking a strategic and commercially minded Business Development professional to establish and accelerate our presence in the rapidly growing GLP-1 market. This is a unique opportunity to manage the development of our GLP-1 market strategy, identifying customer needs, informing cross-divisional product strategies and supporting commercial execution across our Liquid Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry, Software, and Chemistry businesses.

Initially, the role will focus on supporting the development and implementation of Waters' global GLP-1 market strategy. Working in close partnership with regional commercial teams, field marketing, product management, R&D, applications, and scientific leaders, the successful candidate will help identify customer needs, evaluate market opportunities and manage the adoption of differentiated analytical solutions across the GLP-1 value chain - from discovery through to manufacturing and quality control.

As the GLP-1 business matures, the role will evolve into a broader Business Development Leader position which will include the identification and development of new strategic growth opportunities. This will involve identifying and assessing new strategic growth and emerging adjacent market opportunities, building partnerships and leading cross-functional initiatives market development initiatives across multiple high-growth segments.

This role will serve as key cross-functional partner across multiple business units, ensuring customer insights are translated into product roadmaps, commercial programs, and sustainable business growth.

Responsibilities

Market Strategy & Business Development

• Lead Waters' global GLP-1 market development strategy.
• Develop a deep understanding of customer workflows, unmet needs, competitive dynamics, and emerging trends across pharmaceutical discovery, development, manufacturing, and quality control.
• Develop market segmentation, sizing, competitive intelligence, and growth strategies for GLP-1.
• Identify future adjacent market opportunities and develop recommendations for portfolio expansion.
• Develop strategic business cases supporting investment decisions and growth initiatives.

Customer & Market Insights

• Establish relationships with key pharmaceutical innovators, CDMOs, CROs, and opinion leaders.
• Collect Voice of Customer (VOC) insights globally and translate them into actionable business opportunities.
• Work closely with regional commercial organizations to understand customer adoption barriers and regional market dynamics.
• Monitor competitor activities, emerging technologies, and industry trends.

Cross-Portfolio Product Strategy

• Lead the coordination of product strategy across multiple Waters businesses, including Liquid Chromatography, High Resolution Mass Spectrometry, Columns and Chemistry, Sample Preparation, Software and Scientific Applications.
• Partner with Portfolio Owners and R&D leaders to ensure customer requirements are prioritized, shape integrated development roadmaps, influence future product capabilities and support the development of compelling business cases for new products and enhancements.

Commercial Enablement

• Partner with Global and Regional Marketing teams to develop commercial campaigns, messaging, launch plans, and customer engagement strategies.
• Support strategic customer engagements and executive-level discussions.
• Coordinate field enablement including applications support, sales training, and demonstration strategies.
• Support regional commercial teams during major customer opportunities.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Co-ordinate cross-functional activities involving representatives from Portfolio Management, R&D, Product Marketing, Scientific Operations, Applications, Regional Commercial Teams, Field Marketing, Business Development and Corporate Strategy.
• Support stakeholder alignment, accountability and successful execution of strategic objectives, without direct organizational authority.

Business Performance

• Monitor business performance by defining and tracking key performance indicators, including market penetration, opportunity pipeline, customer adoption, strategic account engagement, revenue growth, market share, commercial funnel progression, and return on investment.
• Deliver actionable insights and recommendations to executive leadership to support market opportunities, business growth and investment decisions.

Future Scope

As the GLP-1 initiative expands, this role will evolve into a broader Business Development leadership position responsible for:

• Identifying emerging strategic growth markets
• Evaluating inorganic growth opportunities and partnerships
• Leading market entry strategies
• Developing new business incubation programs
• Building a dedicated market development organization

The role is expected to expand to include leadership of a small scientific team supporting market development activities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Life Sciences, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Engineering, or related scientific discipline.
• Advanced degree (PhD, MS, MBA) preferred. The ideal candidate will possess:
• Experience in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, analytical instrumentation, or life sciences.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical workflows, particularly biologics, peptides, or GLP-1 therapeutics.
• Experience in product management, strategic marketing, scientific marketing, business development, or commercial strategy.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional initiatives.
• Experience working across global organizations.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and influencing skills.
• Strong analytical and business case development capabilities.
• Ability to translate customer insights into product and commercial strategies.
• Experience with LC, LC-MS, analytical chemistry, or biopharmaceutical workflows is highly desirable.

Travel

Willingness to travel internationally up to 25-35% to engage customers, support regional commercial teams, attend scientific conferences, and coordinate global business development activities.

Company Description

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) is a global leader in life sciences and diagnostics, dedicated to accelerating the benefits of pioneering science through analytical technologies, informatics, and service. With a focus on regulated, high-volume testing environments, our innovative portfolio harnesses deep scientific expertise across chemistry, physics, and biology. We collaborate with customers around the world to advance the release of effective, high-quality medicines, ensure the safety of food and water, and drive better patient outcomes by detecting diseases earlier, managing routine infections, and combating antibiotic resistance. Through a shared culture of relentless innovation, our passionate team of ~16,000 colleagues turn scientific challenges into breakthroughs that improve lives worldwide.

Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our core values at Waters Corporation. It benefits our employees, our products, our customers and our community. Waters complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to sex, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, marital status (including civil unions), military service, veteran status, pregnancy (including childbirth and related medical conditions), genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, legally recognized disability, domestic violence victim status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Waters is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All hiring decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.

Key Words

#Business Development