Associate Director - Alliance Management

About Relation

Relation is a sector defining TechBio company developing transformational medicines, with technology at our core. Our ambition is to understand human biology in unprecedented ways, discovering therapies to treat some of life’s most devastating diseases. We leverage single-cell multi-omics from patient tissue, functional assays, and machine learning to drive disease understanding, from cause to cure.

We are scaling rapidly and building a team of exceptional individuals to push the boundaries of drug discovery. You will work in highly interdisciplinary teams where biology, computation, and engineering come together to solve complex problems that have not been solved before. Our state-of-the-art wet and dry labs in the heart of London are designed to accelerate this integration and translate insight into impact.

We are committed to building diverse and inclusive teams. Relation is an equal opportunities employer and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, gender reassignment, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability, or age.

By joining Relation, you will help define how medicines are discovered and deliver meaningful impact for patients.

The opportunity

Relation is offering a unique opportunity for an experienced Associate Director in Alliance Management to ensure that our strategic pharma partnerships continue to thrive and deliver. Working across high-profile collaborations including GSK and Novartis, you will be the connective tissue between Relation and our partners - building trusted relationships, creating clarity across complex collaborations and helping both organisations work together effectively towards shared strategic goals.

You will sit at the centre of Relation’s partnership model, working closely with Programme Leaders, interdisciplinary teams and senior leaders across Relation and our partner organisations. You will have a highly visible role to safeguard relationship health, contractual alignment and forward visibility - ensuring that the right conversations happen at the right time, commitments are clearly understood, risks and opportunities are surfaced early, and that governance enables high-quality decision making at pace.

You will bring together different perspectives with clarity and pragmatism, helping our partnerships operate as one team, while ensuring commitment to Relation’s high scientific standards, platform integrity and strategic priorities. The delivery of successful partnerships strengthen both partner organisations, and ultimately help to fulfill Relation’s goal of bringing transformational medicines to patients.

Day to day you will:

• Manage the health and effectiveness of strategic pharma partnerships, building trusted relationships across Relation and partner organisations and influencing cross-functional stakeholders at all levels to maintain alignment and momentum.

• Shape and steward partnership governance, ensuring governance meetings focus on the decisions, risks and opportunities that matter, with clear ownership, effective escalation and disciplined follow-through.

• Maintain forward visibility across each alliance, anticipating relational, contractual and governance risks and opportunities and ensuring they are surfaced early to the appropriate decision-makers.

• Safeguard contractual alignment, maintaining oversight of scope, milestones, reporting requirements, financial triggers, data-sharing commitments and other obligations; translating contractual terms into clear implications for teams and governance.

• Influence across organisational boundaries, connecting Programme Leaders, interdisciplinary teams, senior leadership and partner stakeholders to resolve ambiguity, navigate competing perspectives and enable timely decisions.

• Lead alliance-level escalation, bringing clarity to complex or sensitive issues and ensuring escalation strengthens decision-making.

• Shape new partnerships from diligence through launch, collaborating closely with Growth, Corporate and Business Development to embed effective governance, contractual clarity and practical ways of working from the outset.

• Raise the standard of partnering at Relation, applying learning across collaborations to strengthen governance, alliance management and organisational partnering capability as Relation’s portfolio grows.

Professionally, you will have:

• A university degree in a relevant scientific or technical field, or equivalent experience.

• Significant experience in alliance management or strategic partnerships within biotech or pharmaceutical R&D, including substantial experience working with large pharmaceutical partners.

• Deep expertise working with complex collaboration agreements, with the judgement to interpret contractual commitments, identify implications and risks, and translate them into clear actions or governance decisions.

• Experience working in data-rich, technology-enabled or AI/ML-enabled R&D environments is key, particularly in partnerships involving contractual alignment at the intersection of data, technology and intellectual property.

• Strong scientific and drug discovery fluency, enabling you to operate credibly with senior scientific leaders and interdisciplinary teams.

• A track record of influencing senior stakeholders without formal authority, navigating organisational complexity and building alignment across companies, disciplines and competing priorities.

• Strong governance judgement, with experience bringing complex scientific, commercial, contractual and relational issues to senior decision-making forums.

• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to distill complexity into clear, decision-ready recommendations for senior leaders and external partners.

• Confidence navigating disagreement, ambiguity and sensitive partner issues with diplomacy, sound judgement and integrity.

• The ability to maintain strategic perspective and forward visibility while overseeing multiple complex partnerships in a fast-moving environment.

• Bonus experience: Professional alliance management accreditation, such as ASAP CA-AM or CSAP, is desirable.

Personally, you:

• Are comfortable working in a matrixed environment, balancing multiple stakeholders and contributing effectively across teams.

• Take ownership of your work, proactively seek opportunities to contribute, and enable others to do their best work.

• Communicate openly and directly, give and receive feedback constructively, and handle challenging conversations with respect.

• Actively seek out diverse perspectives, build strong working relationships, and contribute to shared goals across teams.

• Embrace challenges with openness and resilience, set high standards for yourself, and strive to deliver meaningful outcomes.

Working Style & Culture at Relation

At Relation, we operate in a matrixed, interdisciplinary environment, where impact is driven through collaboration across scientific, technical, and operational domains. We collaborate, and you will partner with colleagues across multiple teams and projects, contributing your expertise while aligning to shared company priorities. We work together and win together!

RECRUITMENT AGENCIES: Please note that Relation does not accept unsolicited resumes from agencies. Resumes should not be forwarded to our job aliases or employees. Relation will not be liable for any fees associated with unsolicited CVs.

Relation is a committed equal opportunities employer.