Head of Ethics (Hiring Immediately)

Head of Ethics

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced and thoughtful Head of Ethics to play a key role in shaping and delivering ethical practice at one of the UK’s most ambitious health research programmes.

At Our Future Health, ethics is central to everything we do. As we work towards building a programme of up to 5 million volunteers, this role will help ensure that we operate with integrity, transparency, and care for participants at every step. You’ll support the delivery of ethics across the organisation—helping guide complex decision-making, embedding ethical thinking into our work, and supporting teams to navigate new and emerging challenges in health research.

Despite big improvements in healthcare in our lifetimes, today millions of people in the UK still live in poor health as they get older. Diseases like cancer, dementia, diabetes, and heart disease affect the lives of many people in our communities. Our goal is to create a world-leading resource for health research, to improve our understanding and spot the patterns of how and why common diseases start, so treatments can begin sooner and be more effective.

Our Future Health will be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to detect, prevent, and treat diseases. We are a charity, supported by the UK Government, in partnership with charities and industry. We work closely with the NHS and with public authorities across all nations and regions of the UK.

Role Impact

The Head of Ethics will support and report to the Director of Ethics, overseeing the day-to-day delivery and governance of ethics activities across Our Future Health. You will help ensure alignment with research ethics regulation, support an ethics-by-design approach across programme activities, and contribute to identifying and addressing ethical considerations as they arise.

You will support and guide a team of Ethics Managers, helping to ensure consistent and high-quality ethical input across the programme. This role will also contribute to strengthening the ethical foundations of our clinical research recruitment service and supporting the development of our approach to returning health feedback to participants.

What you’ll be doing:

In this role, you will work closely with the Director of Ethics to shape and deliver the organisation’s ethics approach, helping to translate strategic priorities into practical ways of working. You’ll provide thoughtful input on complex ethical topics and support the development of a culture of ethical awareness, integrity and shared responsibility across the organisation.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Supporting the delivery of ethics and governance activities across the organisation.
• Managing and supporting a team of Ethics Managers
• Contributing to the development and implementation of ethics policies, procedures and frameworks
• Acting as a point of escalation for ethics queries, working with the team to support resolution
• Providing input to decision-making forums and supporting organisational risk management
• Working collaboratively with teams across the organisation to explore ethical considerations in areas such as partnerships, product, communications and research
• Engaging with internal and external stakeholders to understand ethical considerations within a large-scale research programme
• Supporting the Ethics Advisory Board and its membership
• Contributing to ethics training and awareness across the organisation
• Supporting reporting to boards and funding bodies
• Deputising for the Director of Ethics where appropriate

Requirements

We’re looking for someone who brings both deep expertise in research ethics and the ability to apply it pragmatically in a complex, fast-moving environment.

You may bring:

• Experience working in ethics within large-scale or multidisciplinary health research (e.g. NHS, academia, industry or funding bodies)
• Experience contributing to the development and implementation of ethical frameworks or policies
• Experience supporting or managing teams
• The ability to work through complex ethical questions in collaboration with a range of teams (e.g. data, technology, science, communications)
• An understanding of ethical and regulatory considerations relating to genomics, health data, and human tissue
• Awareness of relevant regulatory bodies and research ethics requirements
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills
• Good organisational and prioritisation skills, with the ability to manage a varied workload
• A pragmatic, thoughtful and considered approach, with the ability to use judgement when handling sensitive top]]>