Senior Instrument Support Scientist / Engineer

The Senior Instrument Support Scientist is responsible for installation, maintenance, and repair of analytical instrumentation. They will set the day-to-day priorities for more junior instrument support staff and deliver technical support and training on hardware and software to users of analytical instrumentation across the business. A customer-centric mindset is essential; the successful candidate will work with users with varying needs and constraints determined by business area, and a wide range of experience levels.

In additional, they will work with the wider Analytical Validity and Compliance Group to identify, prioritise, and deliver improvements to the instrument management and support function to maximise instrument uptime and efficiency of processes, enabling the delivery of business objectives across R&D programmes and operations.

Key Tasks/Accountabilities:

• Responsible for triage of user-reported instrument issues, managing allocation of instrument support scientists to user requests, performing on-site diagnosis, repair and/or scheduling vendor support as appropriate to resolve issues in a timely manner.
• Ensure appropriate support contract specification for each instrument’s usage; oversee coordination of preventative maintenance visits; liaising with vendors and end users to agree scheduling.
• Define and deliver training on instrument use and maintenance to users across the business.
• Develop SOPs and other support documentation to aid user training and self-diagnosis of instrument issues.
• Responsible for the maintenance and day-to-day management of walk-up instruments.
• Management of critical spares and consumables stocks to minimise user downtime.
• Responsible for ensuring instrument supplies are regularly inspected and serviced, to ensure no detrimental impact on equipment availability and performance.
• Ensure timely and effective installation and qualification of new instrumentation.
• Collation of user-reported issues, monitoring of trends and recommendation of preventative measures to increase the reliability of instrumentation.
• Responsible for the propagation of instrument knowledge; ensuring that any knowledge gained from instrument issues and/or vendor conversations is disseminated to end users.
• Responsible for regular reporting of equipment issues to the Analytical Laboratories Manager and other stakeholders.

In addition to this, you will be expected to play an active role in the success of the Analytical Science groups. This could include acting as a technical reviewer for projects, driving relevant continual improvement activities, mentoring less experienced staff, running or contributing to development seminars and deputising for more senior staff as required.

Requirements

Person Specification

Education/Training:

• The successful candidate is likely to be educated to degree level in a physical science or engineering
• Field engineer experience/training is highly desirable but not essential

Experience/Knowledge:

Essential

• The successful candidate should have dexterity and experience performing diagnosis and repair of instrumentation, including hands on experience of gas chromatography and/or mass spectrometry instrumentation.
• Experience of user training and knowledge propagation.

Desirable

• Hands on experience of thermal desorption systems
• Practical experience of installing and qualifying chromatography and/or mass spectrometry instrumentation.
• Experience in a service environment, or experience managing users in a multi-user laboratory/core facility.
• Experience managing relationships with customers and/or analytical instrument vendor.
• Experience working within a quality management system

Professional Skills:

• Hands on experience of thermal desorption systems
• Practical experience of installing and qualifying chromatography and/or mass spectrometry instrumentation.
• Experience in a service environment, or experience managing users in a multi-user laboratory/core facility.
• Experience managing relationships with customers and/or analytical instrument vendor.
• Experience working within a quality management system

Benefits

About Owlstone Medical

Owlstone Medical is on a mission to save 100,000 lives and $1.5 billion in healthcare costs through the development and application of Breath Biopsy®. This involves collecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and respiratory droplets from breath, which can provide information about metabolic activity and markers related to health and disease.

Breath sampling has substantial advantages for the early detection of disease and to enable precision medicine approaches to patient care. To realize these advantages, Owlstone Medical offers Research Products and Services for biomarker discovery and is developing tests in applications including cancer, liver disease, asthma, and environmental exposure. Our work includes partnerships with major organizations including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, the Cleveland Clinic, and the NHS and our platform is in use at well over 100 clinical and academic sites worldwide.

Our leadership in breath is underpinned by our world-class and varied team, including systems engineers, clinical scientists, analytical chemists, artificial intelligence specialists and clinical trials coordinators.

The Owlstone group also commercializes a range of highly innovative products based on its proprietary FAIMS chemical sensing technology in other markets including Scientific, Industrial Process Control, Military and Homeland Defense.

We offer a relaxed, friendly, flexible and international working environment with a strong and vibrant team-spirit. You will be rewarded with a competitive salary package that includes an Employee share options scheme and private medical insurance and your work will have a clear impact on people’s lives. If you want to experience the buzz of a thriving start-up company set to succeed on a global scale, Owlstone Medical could be the place for you.

We do not accept applications from agencies outside of our preferred supplier list. If you are concerned that your application has not been received by Owlstone Medical, please contact us using

Owlstone is an equal opportunity employer, and we will consider all qualified applicants for employment without discrimination on any characteristic protected by law including but not exhaustive to; grounds of disability, sex or sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity leave status, race or national or ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, gender identity or re-assignment, marital or civil partnership status.

Due to the nature of our business, all employment is subject to satisfactory references being obtained and the attainment of a Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) check. Access to selected project information requires prior additional security authorization. Access to US technical data by employees requires prior Export Control function approval. Full clearance must be satisfactorily attained against all applicable project security and US export control authorisations. Failure to meet any reference, BPSS, project-security or export-control authorisations may have an impact on successfully completing your probationary period.

Notice to agencies

Owlstone Medical Ltd politely requests no contact from recruitment agencies or media sales. We don’t accept speculative CVs from recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.