The higher education sector is a dynamic environment where universities compete on a global basis for resources, students, and high-quality staff. The impending retirement of the baby boomer generation will create increased competition for research leaders. One way to address this is to develop research leaders from existing researchers. However, little is known about what it takes to transition from a leading researcher to a research leader, so there is much to be learned from the experiences of those who have successfully navigated those transitions. To explore the transition from early career researcher to leading researcher to research leader, we undertook a mixed methods study involving 30 senior research leaders and administrators from a range of organisations across Australia. In this paper, we describe how the career paths of these research leaders developed in a highly competitive research environment and discuss how universities can attract, retain, develop, and promote their researchers.