Technical Director

Technical Director | London (Hybrid, Min 3 days on-site) | 25% Travel | Executive-Level Package

The Opportunity

This is a senior leadership role in the truest sense.

You’ll be joining a business in a period of rapid growth and change. The ambition is there, the investment is there, but the technical and quality foundations need to evolve quickly to keep up.

This isn’t about maintaining what exists. It’s about building what’s needed next.

You will sit on the senior leadership team as the voice of technical integrity across the business, helping it move faster, make better decisions, and scale without losing control.

They’re not looking for someone to preserve the status quo. They want someone who sees what could be better and gets on with improving it, thoughtfully, but without hesitation.

What You’ll Do

You’ll lead the technical agenda end-to-end, with Quality as the anchor, ensuring the business can scale with confidence.

In practice:

• Set and lead the overall Quality strategy, aligned to a fast-growing, evolving business
• Own and evolve the Quality Management System, making it scalable, practical, and embedded
• Establish a culture of audit readiness and operational discipline across all areas
• Lead a business-wide quality transformation programme, driving both process and behavioural change
• Act as the senior point of escalation for regulatory and compliance risk, providing clear, commercially grounded direction
• Make smart, well-judged decisions at pace, balancing risk, quality, and commercial reality
• Shape how Regulatory Affairs enables growth, not just compliance
• Partner with R&D and product teams to ensure quality and regulatory thinking is built in early
• Translate technical constraints into clear, workable decisions that keep things moving
• Build, lead, and align multidisciplinary technical teams with clear accountability
• Influence at senior leadership and board level with clarity and credibility

What You’ll Need

This is a role for someone already operating at senior leadership level, comfortable setting direction and owning outcomes.

You’ll bring:

• Proven experience leading Quality at a senior level within a regulated environment
• A track record of improving and scaling QMS frameworks in growing businesses
• Strong experience with audits, inspections, and operating under regulatory scrutiny
• The ability to make clear, confident decisions quickly, even when information isn’t perfect
• A mindset that challenges the status quo and looks for smarter ways of doing things
• A pragmatic approach to risk, willing to take measured decisions to move things forward
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to prioritise what really matters
• A leadership style that combines clarity, pace, and accountability
• A natural bias for action, with the judgement to know where to focus

You’re likely also to have:

• Experience across both Quality, Regulatory and R&D environments
• A background in pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare, nutraceuticals or similarly regulated sectors

About the Company

An established business with strong brands and a growing market presence.

They’re now in a phase of rapid growth, which brings both opportunity and pressure. The focus is on building the right foundations to support that growth properly, without losing momentum.

There’s a clear expectation internally around ownership, pace, and delivering outcomes, people are trusted to get on with it and make things happen.

Why This Role

• A true seat at the table, shaping business-critical decisions
• Ownership of a high-impact transformation agenda during a growth phase
• The opportunity to build quality and regulatory capability in order to support R&D
• A role where pace, judgement, and leadership genuinely matter

Interested?

If you’re already operating at this level and want a role where you can shape, challenge, and build, let’s have a conversation.

For a confidential discussion and further information about the role, please contact Tracey Harris Director Harris Lord Life Sciences traceyh@harrislord.com 01403 577971

Harris Lord is acting as an employment agency with regard to this role