Materials Science Jobs

• Harlow
• On-site
• Senior

Lead technical workstreams in R&D, designing and interpreting experimental programmes to develop polymer products, formulations and applications. Oversee laboratory, pilot plant and manufacturing trials, supporting scale-up, technology transfer and new product launches while troubleshooting production runs alongside manufacturing, commercial and regulatory teams.

• Harlow
• Entry level

Two-year graduate programme within the Research and Development function, rotating through four six-month placements covering synthesis, applications and analytical science. Involves designing and running laboratory experiments, analysing scientific and commercial data, and presenting recommendations to stakeholders while contributing to new products and intellectual property.

• Shildon
• £47,000 – £59,000 pa
• Senior

Hands-on formulation role developing, testing and optimising chemical formulations for advanced materials and surface technologies, then scaling them from lab batches through pilot trials to full production. Involves lab experimentation, physical and performance testing, root cause analysis and close work with production and engineering teams on scale-up, raw material selection and new product introduction.

• New York, United States
• Hybrid
• US$200,000 – US$300,000 pa
• Director · manages people

Owns chemistry capabilities end to end, setting technical direction and leading a team across capability-building and customer-facing streams. Couples atomistic and molecular insight into continuum and systems-scale models, deciding which ML approaches to build or adopt, while staying hands-on on hard technical problems.

• London
• Hybrid
• Director · manages people

Lead PhysicsX's chemistry capability, setting technical direction and standards across atomistic to systems-scale modelling. Manage two streams: building chemistry capabilities with Product and Research, and staffing customer projects with Field Engineering. Act as the foremost chemistry voice with customers and hiring manager for the team.

• Lancaster
• £33,002 – £37,694 pa

Support a collaborative materials science project developing materials for sustainable agriculture, using preparation, characterisation and in vitro biological testing to study how material properties affect plant interactions. The post sits in a rapidly expanding chemistry department with state-of-the-art labs, and involves prototype validation, biological testing and implementing safe systems in a chemistry laboratory.

• Stockton-on-Tees
• On-site
• £34,500 – £46,500 pa
• Senior
• Permanent

Lead technical delivery of small to medium process chemistry projects, designing and scaling polymerisation reactions from lab to pilot scale. Act as a technical specialist in acrylic and vinyl monomer chemistry, running hazard reviews and process safety work while mentoring junior scientists in a collaborative R&D team.

• Bath
• £38,784 – £46,049 pa
• Entry level
• Contract

Postdoctoral role designing and investigating highly selective, robust catalysts for ring-opening, ring-expansion and polycondensation of renewable monomers to create sustainable plastics with controlled architectures. Involves anaerobic Schlenk line and glove box work plus polymer characterisation by spectroscopy, GPC, DSC, TGA and tensile testing, within the SCHEMA Hub's cross-university and industrial network.

GPC · DSC · TGA +3

• Enfield
• Hybrid
• Entry level

Supports safe, reliable smelting operations through process engineering, leading improvement initiatives in process safety, automation and throughput. Develops process models, runs lab, pilot and plant-scale trials, and uses plant data and statistical analysis to reduce variability and resolve constraints. Collaborates with Operations, Engineering, EHS, Supply Chain and R&D teams.

• Sheffield
• Hybrid
• £39,560 – £41,885 pa
• Entry level
• Contract

Develops explainable machine learning models such as symbolic regression, Bayesian optimisation and genetic algorithms to decode polymer-solvent thermodynamics and soft-matter physics. Involves featurizing complex polymer architectures, analysing multi-modal experimental datasets, and building open-source cheminformatics tools in Python/Julia for sustainable inverse formulation design.

Python · Julia · C++ +1

• Oxford
• On-site
• £21,805 pa
• Entry level
• Contract

A DPhil studentship in polymerisation catalysis, developing new catalysts for CO2 copolymerisation and sustainable oxygenated polymers. The work spans ligand and inorganic catalyst synthesis, NMR/MS/XRD characterisation, kinetic and thermodynamic polymerisation analysis, and materials testing in the Williams group at the Chemical Research Laboratory.

NMR · Mass Spectrometry · XRD

• London
• Hybrid
• Mid-level
• Permanent

Builds and operates the software layer connecting an AI materials-discovery platform to partner laboratories worldwide. Designs APIs and data models for lab-to-cloud exchange, integrates instruments, robotic platforms and LIMS/ELN systems, and hardens integrations with retries, queueing and monitoring. Works in a small multidisciplinary team of materials scientists, ML and software engineers.

FastAPI · Pydantic · LIMS +5

• London
• Hybrid
• Mid-level
• Permanent

Builds and maintains a cloud-native ML infrastructure platform on Kubernetes, owning CI/CD pipelines, model registries, experiment tracking and deployment automation. Scales distributed GPU training for JAX and PyTorch workloads, manages multi-environment configs with Kapitan and Terraform, and drives platform reliability and cloud cost optimisation for research teams.

Kubernetes · AWS · GCP +7

• Brackley
• On-site
• £500,000 pa
• Permanent

Develops and optimises battery pack assembly and test processes, designing jigs, fixtures, gauges and tooling, and integrating automation such as cobots, industrial robots and laser welding. Works with internal and external design teams and suppliers to procure, commission and validate production facilities, leading manufacturing deliverables on time and to cost.

SolidWorks · Inventor · Cobots +3