R&D Data & AI Director — Hands-on Strategy Lead

GSK; Greater London; On-site; GBP 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

GSK is seeking a seasoned Director of Data & Data Science, Development Data, to lead data strategy across R&D. You will own the portfolio, guide investment, and ensure governance while remaining hands-on 50% of the time—coding, modeling, and building agentic AI systems with appropriate oversight.

You will partner with senior R&D and Enterprise Data & AI leaders to unlock high-value opportunities and steward budgets and partnerships. This role blends science, data, and technology at scale.

Qualifications

• Experience leading a data, analytics, or data science organization in a regulated environment.
• Experience leading leaders such as product owners or engineering managers with large scope.
• Track record of multi-year data and data science strategy with stakeholder funding.
• Technical credibility in data engineering and data science for architecture and prioritization.
• Willingness to spend ≥50% hands-on coding, analysis, modeling, AI systems.
• Experience building or deploying agentic AI systems in data science.
• Knowledge of R&D data governance, privacy, and audit readiness.

Responsibilities

• Shape the R&D data and data science strategy — translate vision into a focused roadmap across R&D Data Categories.
• Lead the R&D Data Category portfolio — ensure clear ownership, healthy roadmaps, measurable value.
• Direct investment and priorities — balance engineering, data science, platform capacity, governance and debt.
• Build and develop an outstanding TDPO organization — set expectations, hiring, and career development.
• Champion engineering and data science excellence — establish standards and communities of practice.
• Safeguard data governance and compliance — maintain quality, metadata, access controls, privacy, audit readiness.
• Set the data science and AI agenda — partner with senior scientific leaders to identify value opportunities.
• Create and scale agentic AI data science — build systems that explore data and generate trusted insights.
• Steward technology, funding, and partnerships — shape architecture, budgets, supplier relationships.
• Be the voice of the function — communicate portfolio health, adoption, risk, capacity and value.

Skills

Agentic AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Data Science

Leadership

Product Strategies

Data Governance

OpenAI

Machine Learning (ML)

People Leadership

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder Management

Technical Knowledge

Education

Advanced quantitative or life-sciences degree

Job description

GSK is seeking a seasoned Director of Data & Data Science, Development Data, to lead data strategy across R&D. You will own the portfolio, guide investment, and ensure governance while remaining hands-on 50% of the time—coding, modeling, and building agentic AI systems with appropriate oversight.

You will partner with senior R&D and Enterprise Data & AI leaders to unlock high-value opportunities and steward budgets and partnerships. This role blends science, data, and technology at scale.