R&D Scientist: Optical Instruments Product Manager

Location: Sheffield, S4 (onsite)

We are looking for someone with a PhD in experimental physics or materials science to spearhead the development of new optical instrumentation and metrology products.

If you are passionate about building equipment and looking for an opportunity to turn your obsession into real products and a new business unit within a successful small company, then this role could be for you.

About the Role

At Ossila, our engineers and scientists design and build new, innovative pieces of scientific equipment. We manufacture a wide range of products in Sheffield, including thin-film coating equipment, environmental control systems, and opto-electrical testing systems. In the next phase of our growth, we are expanding the number of products teams within the business. We are keen to add an experienced equipment-building scientist to our team to develop new categories of optical instruments including analytical, processing, or measurement devices.

If you have ever thought that scientific equipment is overpriced and under-reliable, this is an opportunity for you to make a difference. Our goal is to offer our customers better quality and better value equipment than existing competitors by providing disruptive improvements in price and performance for the equipment we design and manufacture.

In this role, you will manage the product through its entire life cycle, working alongside multiple teams across Ossila, including engineering, manufacturing, marketing, compliance, and customer care. You will be responsible for every aspect of the products you develop by:

• Maintaining the product road map for your categories of equipment, undertaking market research, and creating & revising specifications on potential products.
• Analysing not only what we should develop, but if and when we should develop it.
• Ensuring that planned products will meet the essential needs of our customers.
• Creating working proof-of-concept prototypes using off-the-shelf components.
• Working with our engineering team to help turn your creations into high-quality, reliable products at an affordable price.
• Applying and documenting laboratory or safety standards relevant to your equipment with the support of our engineering and compliance teams.
• Fully understanding the complexities and nuances of the techniques and data related to your equipment to become an expert in not just the results, but also the process.
• Contributing extensive marketing content around your products, including application notes, photos, videos, sample data, and diagrams.
• Acting as manufacturer, quality control engineer, and calibration supervisor during product launch.
• Implementing strict documentation and guidelines to make sure that quality is maintained as you hand over the manufacturing.
• Providing front-line technical customer support.
• Adding additional traded products, to create the “complete product principle” consisting of a package of all components and consumables that would be required for a lab to generate publishable data.

As part of a small and fast-growing company, you will work both collaboratively and independently. This role will involve working on several concurrent tasks with different deadlines at the same time, with the need to re-prioritise as new tasks come in.

About You

We are looking for a postdoctoral physicist, materials scientist, analytical instrumentation chemist, or other laboratory scientist/engineer with several years of post-doctoral research experience and a strong equipment building background. Full details of the candidate specification and further info about the job, the company and how to apply can be found on the Ossila website (via the ‘Apply’ button above).

No agencies please.