Job Description
About us CF is a leading consultancy dedicated to making an enduring positive impact on health and healthcare. Our purpose is to make a lasting, positive difference to health and healthcare. Our mission is to be invaluable to our clients, supporting them to innovate and make lasting improvements - and to build an exceptional company that attracts, develops and retains a trusted team.
CF serves the entire healthcare sector - from health systems, life sciences companies, and health tech to investors and the voluntary sector. Our Life Sciences practice helps pharma, biotech, and medtech clients drive rapid adoption of innovation, enabled by our deep health systems expertise and unmatched access to health data. We combine rigorous analytical problem-solving with genuine knowledge of how health systems work - not as an external observer, but as trusted advisors who work with NHS leaders and life sciences companies from the same integrated team.
As an inclusive and values-driven organisation, we are committed to excellence. With unmatched access to UK healthcare data and specialist data science expertise, our consultants are a driving force for enduring, positive change.
About the role CF is seeking a Business Development Manager for its Life Sciences practice. Our practice is built on cultivating relationships grounded in trust, combined with demonstrating genuine insight into clients' challenges. Business development at CF is both relational and substantive: it requires the ability to engage as a peer with senior client stakeholders, combined with domain expertise, structured thinking, and collaborative problem solving.
We do not use outbound origination and prospecting. But you will only succeed in this role if you enjoy meeting new people, taking initiative, and working as a team to pursue a set of proactive priorities and to respond with agility to inbound requests.
The BD Manager works alongside the practice's Managing Partner and Director as a domain-expert contributor - deepening client relationships, shaping bespoke propositions, and ensuring that CF's intellectual offer reaches the people who need it most. This is a player-manager role. The BD Manager has line management responsibility for two roles: the BD Consultant (a CF consultant on rotation into business development) and the BD Digital and AI-Enabled Intelligence Coordinator (a role shared with the Health Investing practice). The BD Manager leads by example rather than by delegation alone - remaining personally active in client relationships, proposal development, and thought leadership, while directing, supporting, and developing a small team. It demands someone who can contribute to client conversations as a credible expert, develop compelling proposals, build CF's presence in the life sciences market, and bring out the best in the people around them.
The practice CF's Life Sciences practice serves pharma, biotech, and medtech clients across three core service lines:
Accelerating the adoption of innovation - supporting clients to embed products and innovations in health systems, with a focus on market access, launch strategy, and adoption pathways
Data, Digital, AI and Evidence - leveraging CF's unmatched access to NHS data, real-world evidence capability, and health analytics expertise to generate insights that drive commercial and clinical decisions
Policy and Influencing - shaping the conditions in which innovations succeed through evidence-based engagement with regulators, HTA bodies, health systems, data infrastructure and government
Our clients include market access leads, medical affairs directors, commercial strategy heads, and health economics functions - alongside critical roles in regulators and health systems related to regulation, policy, and engagement with life sciences.
CF's distinctive proposition is to drive and prove the uptake of population health medicines: partner with the health system to lift adoption, measure the effect end to end with CF's access to data, and publish it. This rests on an inside-out understanding of health systems and on leveraging data, digital and AI, focused on population health, where a triple win exists of better outcomes, lower system costs and stronger returns for life sciences. The agreed direction is to shift increasingly from the UK to the global level and to engage earlier in the product life cycle. We are seeking to be at the forefront of efforts to integrate our rich access to data and use of AI, becoming a disruptor in the market.
What you will do 1. Build and sustain client relationships The primary purpose of this role is to cultivate the relationships that lead to consulting engagements. CF's model is relational and collaborative - engagements are earned through demonstrated expertise and genuine understanding of client challenges. You will:
Maintain and develop a portfolio of senior relationships across priority pharma, biotech, and medtech accounts, with a focus on market access, medical affairs, and commercial functions
Engage clients in genuine problem-solving conversations - bringing insight, asking the right questions, and helping clients to articulate challenges that CF is positioned to address
Support the practice leadership in preparing for and following up on client meetings, ensuring that every interaction advances the relationship
Represent CF at industry events, conferences, and roundtables - contributing intellectually, not just attending
Identify emerging opportunities and bring them to the practice leadership with a clear view of relevance and potential approach
2. Lead proposition and proposal development Working alongside the Director and BD Consultant, you will play an active and substantive role in developing CF's propositions and proposals. This is collaborative intellectual work. You will:
Contribute domain knowledge and client insight to proposal development - helping to frame the problem correctly and ensure the proposed approach is grounded in clinical and commercial reality
Draft and review proposal content, particularly on context, requirements, and strategic framing, where healthcare and life sciences depth matters most
Shape bespoke propositions for target clients, drawing on knowledge of their therapeutic areas, pipeline, and market access challenges
Quality assure proposals before submission, ensuring they are coherent, appropriately positioned, and reflective of CF's distinctive offer
3. Manage the commercial pipeline and client intelligence You will maintain a clear and current view of CF's commercial pipeline and the external market landscape, using tools and digital platforms to make this efficient and insight rich. You will:
Own the BD pipeline, ensuring every active opportunity has a clear owner, status, and next step, and - with support from the Coordinator - maintaining the underlying tracker and keeping records current
Draw on intelligence sources - including LinkedIn Sales Navigator monitoring, account tracking, and personnel change alerts - to identify engagement moments and ensure the practice leadership acts on them promptly
Prepare pipeline review materials and briefings for the weekly BD meeting, drawing out the key decisions and actions required
Review any RFP and procurement intelligence surfaced by the Coordinator, make pursuit recommendations to the Managing Partner, and ensure the team responds to relevant opportunities at pace
Hold the Coordinator accountable for CRM quality, and ensure account records support genuine strategic planning - not just administrative logging
4. Build thought leadership and market presence CF's market presence is built on intellectual credibility. Thought leadership - white papers, insight articles, conference contributions, and policy commentary - is both a reputation asset and a direct source of client engagement. You will:
Identify thought leadership opportunities aligned to CF's service lines and target audiences, and work with the practice leadership to shape and develop content
Contribute substantively to the development of insight pieces - bringing analytical depth and sector knowledge
Ensure thought leadership is deployed effectively: targeted to the right audiences, published in the right channels, and followed up with direct client engagement
Monitor and synthesize sector developments - including regulatory changes, NICE decisions, NHS England priorities, and pharma pipeline announcements - and translate them into commercial intelligence for the practice leadership.
5. Lead, develop, and direct the BD team The BD Manager has line management responsibility for the BD Consultant (on rotation) and the BD Digital and AI Enabled Intelligence Coordinator. Both require direction, clear priorities, and active development rather than close supervision. You will:
Set clear priorities and work plans for both team members, ensuring their time is focused on the activities most likely to advance client relationships and drive pipeline conversion
Support the BD Consultant's professional development, providing coaching on proposal development, client engagement, and analytical problem solving consistent with CF's approach
Direct the Coordinator's digital, intelligence, and pipeline activities, ensuring outputs are timely, accurate, and integrated into the BD operating rhythm
Embed AI tools across the team's working practices - setting expectations, modelling use, and ensuring both team members are building genuine capability in enterprise tools including Claude and Microsoft Copilot
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