Fund leader - 3 Years Fixed Term Contract at Mintek

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS:

Leadership

• Provide active stage-gating and governance for commercialisation investments to prevent passive R&D expenditure.
• Exercise foresight, creativity, and professional judgment when making decisions or recommendations that directly impact research direction and the commercial outcomes of the Mintek IP portfolio.
• Guide technical research teams toward meeting critical, clearly defined commercial milestones.

Strategy & Innovation

• Establish and refine mandates, application criteria, and evaluation procedures for internal commercialisation funding instruments.
• Assess the local and international funding landscape to identify investment opportunities aligned with Mintek’s focus areas.
• Transform identified opportunities into high-quality proposals for externally funded commercial de-risking.
• Act as a "business mirror" to technical teams to ensure investment decisions are informed by clearly articulated commercial & market opportunities.
• Continually refine stage-gating and review procedures to ensure technologies move efficiently through the institutional commercialisation pipeline.

Financial Sustainability

• Support the development of robust internal funding proposals and systematically manage the portfolio of internal seed funds.
• Leverage internal seed funding to attract external co-investment, strategic partnerships, and DFI funding.
• Ensure that external revenue contributions from successful proposals actively support Mintek’s broader commercialisation programmes.

Execution, People and Planning

• Drive reporting mechanisms and quarterly reviews for all commercialisation investments, acting as the primary secretariat for funded projects.
• Manage large, multi-year funding programmes, executing comprehensive resource and timeline planning for funded milestones.
• Coordinate project inception meetings to closely align technical development with commercial de-risking activities.

Compliance Management

• Establish and monitor the operational systems and mandates required for sound governance of externally funded commercialisation projects and internal Seed Fund investments.
• Provide operational oversight of the work of applicants and technical staff to ensure absolute compliance with funding mandates.
• Proactively assess, profile, and manage all risks related to the commercialisation funding programs and individual projects in the portfolio.

Relationship Management and Reporting

• Prepare highly professional statistical and narrative reports for internal funding committees, Exco, and external institutional stakeholders.
• Engage deeply with applicants pre- and post-award to ensure milestones are commercially geared.
• Lead, guide, and mentor researchers and technical staff as they navigate the complex commercialisation funding landscape.

Minimum requirements

QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE:

• Master’s degree in science / engineering
• PhD in a scientific or technical field and/or Business qualification (MBA qualification would be an advantage)
• 3–5 years of experience directly related to technology transfer or investment fund management.
• Nature of Experience: Proven experience within a technology transfer function in a University or Science Council managing seed-funding projects or investment funds and associated governance processes.