JOB OVERVIEW

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Product Development Manager to join my client company’s team.
In this pivotal role, you will lead the the management of the company’s day to day technical activities, to ensure that product development takes place at the pace and in the areas required by the business.
You will lead other members of the team and plan/direct their work – but must also be willing to be directly involved in technical activities.
While the majority of this role will be lab-based, there will be elements of client interaction required.
This is a fantastic opportunity to be part of a pioneering team where your results are recognised and can have a noticeable impact on the company development.

SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, AND EXPERIENCE

Essential

• BSc or Masters in a STEM related degree. Preferably Materials Science, Physics or Chemistry.
• An experienced project manager with a background in managing small teams and technology programmes. Previous experience in lab-based settings with good lab practice.
• Design of experiments to improve technical performance.
• A confident communicator, comfortable in customer environments.
• Proven experience of high-quality experimental data collection and analysis.
• Ability to learn new technologies quickly.
• Good IT literacy – Microsoft Office including Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Teams/Outlook

Desirable

• Previous experience in one of the following fields: Materials science, polymer science, polymer chemistry, or liquid crystal science.
• Comfortable working in a small start up company where priorities can change rapidly.
• Experience working with equipment related to microscopy or determining thermo-mechanical properties of materials e.g. DSC, DMA, etc.
• Experience working in an Application Development Laboratory with knowledge of material testing to ASTM or ISO Standards.

• Lead focussed technical programmes to validate and improve the company’s technology.
• Manage the priorities of a small lab-based technical team.
• Manage customer validation trials.
• Lab-based manufacture and characterisation of proprietary liquid crystal elastomers.
• Support method development to increase the scale and efficient production of liquid crystal elastomer samples.