Innovation Manager

Salary:       £54,000 - £57,000 

Benefits:    Include flexible working and 33 days annual leave per annum + UK Bank Holidays

Hours:       Full-time at 37.5 hours per week

Contract:   Permanent on KSS AHSN Ltd Terms (trading as Health Innovation KSS)

Base:         KSS AHSNs primary place of business is The Beehive, located in Gatwick/Crawley, West Sussex. We have further satellite / hot-desking arrangements at sites located in Guildford. Contractually, your normal place of work will be Health Innovation KSS’s primary place of business.

Location:   The role is predominately remote, although Health Innovation KSS work on a hybrid basis. The successful candidate is expected to be based in, or be able to attend meetings in the Kent, Surrey, Sussex geography.

Can you help to generate economic growth through the adoption and spread of innovations from the digital, medtech and life sciences sector?

Are you passionate about improving health outcomes for our population?

Health Innovation KSS are seeking to appoint an industry focused Innovation Manager to join our team to support and deliver on Health Innovation KSS’s engagement with health technology companies and innovators and their networks across all technology sectors (digital, medical technology, diagnostics and pharmaceutical) and to provide tailored innovator support to high potential innovations.

About KSS AHSN

Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN Limited (KSS AHSN), trading as Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex as of 1 October 2023, is a social enterprise: a purpose-led not-for-profit company. All its surpluses are reinvested into creating a sustainable healthcare innovation network and delivering on its vision.

Health Innovation KSS works with industry, higher education, health and care organisations across Kent, Surrey and Sussex to achieve the following goals:

·      Enabling the spread and adoption of innovation

·      Improving the quality and safety of health and care

·      Supporting innovators and driving economic growth

We are one of 15 Health Innovation Networks within the UK. This links us into a unique collaboration of expertise and experience. Innovation networks share learning, pool intelligence and offer access to a pipeline of emerging and proven solutions from around the country.

Purpose of the role

Our Innovation Manager will be:

·      Working as part of the enterprise and delivery team within Health Innovation KSS, taking a leadership role for a portfolio of products/innovation needs areas.

·      Managing a portfolio of products and initiatives which may include some with Senior Innovation/Programme Manager / Associate Director involvement.

·      Supporting delivery of tailored packages of support to industry and innovators in line with the Health Innovation network offers to innovators.

·      Supporting innovators and companies to generate economic growth and wealth for our region through their product development and adoption and spread.

·      Making a contribution to income and the income generation pipeline to generate income for Health Innovation KSS to ensure long-term sustainability.

·      Supporting links between innovators and a range of organisations to deliver the spread and adoption of innovation into practice, developing the innovation and research eco-system and innovation pipeline.   

Key skills, experience and personal style

Our Innovation Manager will have:

·      A background which includes commercial experience and support to innovators.

·      Experience, or some understanding of, the investment landscape from; public body grants to angel and VC investment within innovation.

·      An understanding of the barriers and challenges faced by SME’s as they scale their business, including and not limited to; research and development, strategy development, recruitment and finance management.

·      An existing network of industry-beneficial stakeholders, for signposting and guidance, is also desirable.

·      Effective partnership working and stakeholder management.

·      Experience in presenting to senior stakeholders and senior colleagues, with a track record of influencing stakeholders and an ability to change their perspectives.

·      Ability to use own initiative in managing a project or pipeline of innovations.

·      Willingness and openness to working in a team, sharing and receiving best practice support.

·      Ability to work seamlessly with a team of colleagues and wider stakeholders to support technology adoption. This would extend to experience of project planning in this area.

·      Adaptable and able to find workarounds to problems and blockages to innovation/.

·      Possess charisma and dynamism and a ‘can-do’ approach to problem-solving.

·      It would be highly desirable, although not essential, if your experience extends to interaction with clinicians, innovators and health & social care systems, due to the specific focus on clinical innovations and clinical engagement.

Next Steps

To apply for this role, you must do so by following the application process via our Career site / job openings area. You will answer some eligibility questions as well as some which are related to your day-to-day job. After the job closes, our selection panel will review your application answers and CV. It is our aim to manage our recruitment processes in a fair, consistent and unbiased way. Please be assured that your application and CV will be entirely anonymised, until shortlisting has taken place.

The closing date for applications is 23:59 on 10^th August 2025.

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to the next step, which will be a first formal interview. Initial interviews are expected to be conducted remotely, via Teams, W/C 18^th August 2025.

We love giving feedback, so if you do attend for interview, we will share how well you performed at the end of the selection process.

No Agencies, thank you.