Job Description

Salary: Starting from £44,340 + benefits
Role duration: Permanent (37.5 hrs/week)
Location: London, UK (Hybrid - 50% office attendance)

Purpose – what you will be achieving:

As a key member of the Academy’s Policy Team, the Senior Policy Officer will play an important role at a critical moment for the organisation. This role will help the Policy team to plan and deliver a new set of priorities for 2026/27. Relevant priorities for this role include, but are not limited to:

• Improving health outcomes in the UK and internationally.
• Mobilising the UK health research system to turn discovery into practice.
• Making the UK the best place in the world to have a career in medical sciences.

Within these overarching priorities, there are some distinct policy programmes the incoming Senior Policy Officer is likely to work on, which could include:

• Maximising the impact of medical sciences in prevention and early detection.
• Transforming the generation and application of clinical evidence to speed up translation from discovery to patient impact, ensuring equitable inclusion of underserved groups.
• Making the UK a global leader in responsible, effective and equitable AI and data use across the biomedical sciences.
• Conducting a foresight exercise to identify high-impact innovations that will be critical within the near future and ensure the health system is enabled to support them.

The Senior Policy Officer will be line managed by a Policy Manager.

About the role – what you will be doing:

Core policy work

• Lead on or support a range of policy projects and activities to inform and influence the policy landscape in accordance with Academy priorities. This work may include leading on or supporting the following:

• Major working group studies and corresponding outputs.
• Informing and responding to Government set pieces and announcements.
• Consultations and rapid responses, and shorter position papers.
• Roundtables, workshops, and other relevant policy events.
• Correspondence and briefings for senior stakeholders.

• Work closely with Fellows and other experts to identify and analyse key policy issues, gather data and expert opinion. Construct impactful conclusions and recommendations to advise internal and external stakeholders.
• Deliver implementation and follow-up activities on policy recommendations across external audiences and stakeholders.
• Maintain an excellent understanding of the policy landscape by monitoring developments and key policy issues, including the use of animals in research (please see the Academy’s statement on the use of animals in research).
• Scope potential new areas of policy work, and/or identify opportunities for the Policy Team.

External engagement

• Collaborate with organisations from academia, Government, healthcare, industry and the charity sector.
• Maintain and develop an effective network of contacts across the sector (including our Fellows) to inform and increase the impact of policy work.
• Represent the Academy at external meetings, parliamentary engagements (such as the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Life Sciences) and political events (such as party conferences).

Supporting the Academy’s wider functions

• Support the Academy’s briefings and parliamentary monitoring functions.
• Coordinate across a wide range of Academy functions, including its Briefings, Impact, and Events capabilities, to maximise the effectiveness of policy work.
• Work with the Communications and Engagement teams to co-develop relevant outputs and activities.
• Brief senior stakeholders for high-level meetings and events where necessary.
• Support the development of core scripts on priority policy topics across the Policy team.
• Support the Monitoring and Evaluation team with monitoring the policy team’s impact.

Budget and line management

• Occasionally manage policy budget lines.
• Occasionally supervise policy interns and placement students.

Closing date for completed applications is 9am, Wednesday 22 April.

Interviews will likely be held online on Thursday 7 May.

Requirements

Essential:

• Good understanding of the UK health research and medical sciences policy landscape, and/or other related areas.
• Experience in scoping, planning and delivering multiple policy projects in parallel, to achieve organisational objectives.
• Ability to develop knowledge of complex policy topics at pace, and identify opportunities for impact within these topics.
• Strong analytical skills and experience of collating evidence from multiple sources. 
• Ability to build and maintain effective relationships with key internal and external contacts, including senior, high-profile individuals.
• Ability to harness the benefits of working in a diverse organisation that is rapidly growing and changing, including across different departments and sub-teams. 
• Effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Able to run impactful policy events, meetings, and engagement activities.
• Commitment to inclusive, accessible and evidence‑based policy work.

Desirable:

• Strong attention to detail. 
• Good IT, literacy and numeracy skills. 

Download the job description

Benefits

We provide our staff with a comprehensive benefits package outlined as follows:

Competitive Rewards

• Generous pension scheme with flexible contributions – we contribute between 8% - 13% of your gross salary (with employee contributions of 3% - 8%)
• Life assurance at three times your salary

Work-life Balance

• Hybrid and agile working. 50% office attendance.
• 26 days annual leave, plus Christmas closure days and bank holidays
• Buying and selling leave
• Family-friendly policies including enhanced maternity and paternity leave (subject to a qualifying period)

Wellbeing and Development

• Complimentary subscriptions to Headspace and Classpass to support your physical and mental wellbeing
• Support through tailored learning and development

Additional Benefits

• A range of enhanced benefits become available once you’ve completed your probation period