Senior Principal - Primary Market Research

Do you want to be part of building and shaping the successful pharma brands of the future?

Are you passionate about understanding why customers and patients behave like they do and applying this to a strategy?

Do you want to work across a mix of strategy consulting projects that draw from competitor, customer, medical and commercial insights, and analytical research?

Are you a highly motivated professional interested in being part of a dynamic team of self-starters, working with global healthcare and pharmaceutical clients across the full product life cycle?

Prescient is looking for an experienced Life Sciences / Pharma Consulting Senior Principal, with a particular passion for, and experience in, quantitative and qualitative research, to join our ever-expanding Commercial Practice.

Do you have:

• Exceptional thinking skills that you can apply to building successful strategies?
• A passion for quantitative and qualitative research in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry?
• Great interpersonal skills - ability to lead and develop teams?
• Top class client relationship and business development skills – ability to win work?
• A strong focus on quality work, and a commitment to delivering to a deadline?

If so, consider turning your expertise into a valuable career at Prescient.

About our Commercial Practice

Prescient has four core practices: Commercial, Competitor Intelligence, Medical and Value, Pricing and Access. We specialise in supporting our biopharma clients in making insightful strategic choices for their products and portfolios. We bring together a unique blend of skills and experiences which are required to drive winning strategies. The Commercial Practice is on an exciting journey to expand our customer-centric team in the UK to better serve our global and domestic clients. When you join this exciting venture, you will be working with global healthcare and pharmaceutical clients across the full product life cycle, to help them unlock the full potential of their brands.

Our Commercial Consulting team help biopharma clients shape winning brand and asset strategies by combining deep customer insight, market foresight, and behavioural understanding. We support projects across the product lifecycle—from early asset vision to launch strategy and brand optimisation—delivering actionable recommendations that drive differentiation, influence decision-making, and unlock growth in competitive markets.

About the opportunity

As a Senior Principal, you will be an important driver of the day to day growth of the Commercial business; winning and leading projects, building and nurturing high value long term relationships with clients and managing and coaching the team.

You will be a trusted person for clients, able to establish yourself as a credible strategic advisor, supported as required by your peers and senior leaders. Be able to lead, stretch and inspire a team of Consultants to deliver high quality insight-led strategic projects effectively, efficiently and profitably. Your lens should be broad enough to think beyond the project, with a constant eye on opportunities to help build and expand client relationships, add value to brands and businesses, and deliver on our "land and expand" account growth model.

Top drawer strategic thinking skills with a strong focus on putting the customer at the heart of the process and being able to stretch and challenge client and internal teams to think beyond the obvious. Strong facilitation, and client management and relationship building skills, ideally developed in a similar consultancy/agency business. An entrepreneurial, growth-focused mindset that you apply to clients, the business and the team you lead.

Key responsibilities

• Project Directing: Collaborate with clients to ensure that projects are designed to answer strategic business questions and executed with a high degree of client satisfaction
• Account Management: Actively participate in devising overall strategic client account plans, supporting the development of the account team, strengthening existing relationships and expanding Prescient’s reach within the client organisation while building the Prescient brand
• Business Development: Seek out new business within existing accounts and pursue opportunities with new brands
• Project Management: Ensure three-dimensional management of client engagements, including design, planning, client and people management, facilitation, analysis and reporting
• Client Management: Collaborate with other members of the project and account teams to ensure clients experience best-in-class customer service
• Subject Matter Expertise: Act as a valued subject matter expert externally, and mentor junior and mid-level staff internally
• Thought Leadership: Collaborate with the marketing team to develop and publish thought leadership content that has a meaningful impact on Prescient’s brand and business development activities
• Line Management: Mentor the members of the Commercial Research team by identifying their strengths and opportunities and supporting their development; ensure sustained focus on delivering concise insights that can create impact and be of value to our clients

Required experience and skills

• Relevant bachelor’s degree or advanced degree – this should include life sciences, ideally with a business and marketing component
• More than ten years of relevant professional experience, with at least seven years in life sciences consulting (with strategy and primary market research experience)
• Demonstrated experience in segmentation and demand studies, including physician/customer segmentation, global demand modelling, and ATU tracking, within pharma or biotech
• Excellent business development skills to cultivate and grow existing client relationships; strong account management skills; exceptional framing and solution-forming skills
• Exceptional thinking skills: strategic, analytical and conceptual
• Extensive experience leading and developing consulting account teams
• Proven experience leading and developing project teams
• Confident communication skills to interact with clients on a peer-to-peer basis and provide subject matter expertise

What we offer

• A competitive base salary and additional bonus and benefits
• A strong values-based culture which is actively lived and promoted
• A team made up of smart and supportive people
• Leaders who are accessible and listen, ambitious for our teams, committed to coaching and sharing their expertise
• An environment where our thinking and our work are all innovative, imaginative and bright
• On-going and tailored career development that stretches you and is based on your ambition, abilities and interests – not boxes
• A culture where everyone is actively encouraged to contribute and influence the business
• Flexible working, recognition for going the extra mile, and a flat hierarchy

About Prescient Healthcare Group

Prescient® is a pharma services firm specialising in dynamic decision support and product and portfolio strategy. We partner with our clients to turn science into value by helping them understand the potential of their molecules, shaping their strategic plans and allowing their decision-making to be the biggest differentiating factor in the success of their products. When companies partner with Prescient, the molecules in their hands have a greater potential for success than the same science in the hands of their competitors.

Founded in 2007, Prescient is a global firm with a footprint in 10 cities across three continents. Our team of nearly 475 experts partners with 27 of the top 30 biopharmaceutical companies, the fastest-growing mid-caps and cutting-edge emerging biotechs, including some of the biggest and most innovative brands. More than 70% of our employees hold advanced life science degrees, and our teams deliver an impressive depth of therapeutic, clinical and commercial expertise.

Prescient has been a portfolio company of Bridgepoint Development Capital since 2021 and Baird Capital since 2017. For more information, please visit

We are an equal opportunity employer and fully comply with applicable legislation in all the geographies in which we operate. Applicants are considered for positions without regard to veteran status, uniformed service member status, race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information or any other category protected by applicable national, federal, state or local laws.

Our company is dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace. If you’re excited about this role, but your experience doesn’t perfectly fit every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right person for this role or others.