Director, Tech Scouting & Business Development

About the role

This is a hybrid position requiring the team member to be onsite a minimum of 3 days per week.

Responsibilities

• Lead all tech scouting due diligence activities for West R&D, enabling the company to discover, understand and explore new technologies that may lead to future inorganic investment.
• Responsible for the process of identifying, contacting, socializing, examining and analyzing target technologies and companies with the expectation to prepare findings into correct format for multi-functional stakeholder group to determine next steps.
• Collaborate and gain commitment with stakeholders internally within West (Commercial, Corporate Development) as well as foster external relationships with outside organizations (startups, incubator and accelerator) as needed to achieve project objectives.
• Work across West R&D’s numerous subject matter experts (SMEs) to understand technologies and determine trends and establish an SME network to support deep dives on selected targets.
• Translate highly technical results into easily understood recommendations that will influence senior stakeholders.
• Provide clear communication, proactively communicate plans and progress while escalating risks, or needs to remove roadblocks that may stall an investment.
• Travel to select targeted research or industry conferences to learn of and scout new technologies.

Requirements

• Masters in biology, chemistry, biomedical, chemical engineering or equivalent scientific or engineering discipline.
• 10+ years of experience, can include time spent either in industry or graduate school.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills And Abilities

• PhD in biology, chemistry, biomedical, chemical engineering or equivalent scientific or engineering discipline.
• Entrepreneurial mindset and proven experience in developing strategy, whether that be working in an academic or industry setting or any other in between (e.g. incubator, tech transfer office, etc.).
• Existing established and academic and/or industry North American network of collaborators.
• Knowledge of IT tools (e.g. DevOps, PowerBI, etc.) that can be used to track and report out on targets.
• Able to be aware of all relevant SOPs as per Company policy as they are related to the position covered by this Job Description.
• Demonstrated ability to plan and lead complex projects and deliver milestones, can either be shown in relevant industry projects or via strong collaborative postgraduate research or a combination of both.
• Strong interpersonal skills to generate, maintain and grow research relationships and gain commitment from all internal and external stakeholders across research projects.
• Willingness to learn and to independently explore new technologies, companies and research, understand nascent technologies and be able to generate due diligence reports with minimal guidance.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and ability to articulate due diligence activities to a variety of different audiences, from expert through to non-technical.

Additional Responsibilities

• Must maintain the ability to work well with others in a variety of situations.
• Must be able to multi-task, work under time constraints, problem solve, and prioritize.

Education

Education: PhD in biology, chemistry, biomedical, chemical engineering or equivalent scientific or engineering discipline.

Work Experience

Work Experience: 10+ years of experience, can include time spent either in industry or graduate school.

Physical Requirements

Sedentary-Exerting up to 10lbs/4kgs of force occasionally, and/or negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time.

Travel Requirements

10%: Up to 26 business days per year