Digital Platform Lead – AI & Digital Health (Research Programme)

Digital Platform Lead – AI & Digital Trials Platform

Location: London Bridge (Hybrid, minimum 3–4 days on site, with regular presence in South East London)

Contract: 3-year academic contract with renewal

BioTalent has partnered with a major academic research programme to appoint a Digital Platform Lead into a high-impact role sitting at the intersection of digital health, AI, and large-scale clinical research.

This is not a pure engineering role, and it’s not a traditional academic post. It’s about owning the delivery and direction of a complex digital platform that underpins a global research programme.

The Opportunity

You’ll lead the development and evolution of a digital platform supporting large-scale, multi-modal data collection across wearable devices, mobile applications, and healthcare systems.

The platform sits at the core of a global research initiative spanning tens of thousands of participants, enabling AI-driven insights, digital trials, and personalised health interventions.

You’ll work across research, clinical, and technical teams, translating scientific needs into scalable, real-world digital infrastructure.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Own the technical and strategic direction of the digital platform, ensuring alignment with research objectives

• Translate clinical and research requirements into clear technical roadmaps and delivery plans

• Oversee integration of external systems such as wearable devices and health data sources, ensuring interoperability and scalability

• Act as the primary point of contact for platform vendors, managing delivery, performance, and contracts

• Coordinate multidisciplinary teams across data science, software engineering, AI, and clinical research

• Ensure the platform supports advanced analytics and AI-driven insights across multimodal datasets

• Oversee data pipelines for real-time ingestion, storage, and analysis of wearable and clinical data

• Implement quality, risk, and contingency frameworks to ensure platform reliability and performance

• Track performance against KPIs, milestones, and programme objectives

• Act as the bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring clarity and alignment

What You’re Not Doing

• You are not building the platform yourself, vendors handle the core engineering

• You are not owning data governance directly, this sits with a dedicated function

This is about ownership, alignment, and delivery across a complex ecosystem.

What They’re Looking For

• PhD in digital health, AI, data science, or a closely related field within healthcare

• Strong experience leading or delivering digital health or data-driven platforms

• Experience working with multimodal data, ideally including wearable or real-world data

• Strong understanding of healthcare data standards such as FHIR or HL7

• Experience operating in complex, multi-stakeholder environments

• Ability to bridge research, clinical, and technical teams effectively

• Experience with cloud-based data platforms and large-scale data infrastructure

• Strong project and programme management capability

Nice to have:

• Experience within academic or research-led environments

• Exposure to AI-driven healthcare applications

• Understanding of research ethics and regulatory environments

• Awareness of UX/UI considerations in digital health platforms

Why This Role

• Own a platform at the centre of a globally significant research programme

• Work at the intersection of AI, digital health, and clinical research

• Influence how large-scale digital trials are designed and delivered

• Collaborate with leading clinicians, researchers, and technical teams

• Long-term opportunity within a funded programme