Material Scientist

Overview

You will drive material understanding and control across polycrystalline wool manufacturing to boost stability, quality, and yield. You’ll build strong supplier relationships to gain insight into chemistry and variability, shaping robust specifications and process improvements. Based mainly in Widnes with some travel to Buffalo, you’ll partner with operations, engineering, and quality teams to standardise practices and transfer knowledge across sites. This role offers meaningful impact on production efficiency and product performance within a global, innovation-driven company.

Responsibilities

• Understand incoming raw materials (composition, impurities, properties) and supplier variations
• Build collaborative supplier relationships and act as technical interface on material chemistry and change management
• Identify process windows, variability sources, and lead supplier audits and improvement initiatives
• Establish material specifications, acceptance criteria, and incoming quality controls
• Optimize formulations to balance performance and cost across batch production
• Investigate raw material changes and their impact on process and product performance
• Provide day-to-day technical support for stable, repeatable polycrystalline wool production
• Analyze and troubleshoot material and process variability across lifecycle
• Implement improvements for efficiency, yield, waste reduction, and process capability
• Collaborate with production, engineering, and quality teams to resolve material/process issues
• Document knowledge to support standardisation and best practices
• Develop technical guidelines, control plans, and troubleshooting tools for operations
• Support training and capability development within manufacturing and technical teams
• Support cross-site material control alignment between UK and US operations
• Coordinate knowledge transfer and benchmarking across sites
• Travel to Buffalo (~20%) for on-site support and Pirson team collaboration

Key requirements

• Degree in Materials Science, Ceramic Engineering, or related discipline with BSc minimum; MSc/PhD preferred
• Strong grounding in inorganic materials, ceramics, fibres, or high-temperature materials
• Manufacturing or industrial materials experience with hands-on production support
• Experience with chemical raw materials, formulations, and process recipes
• Desireable exposure to supplier technical management or external collaboration
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities with a manufacturing focus
• Ability to link material chemistry to process behavior and product performance
• Excellent communication skills with operators, engineers, suppliers, and management
• Comfort working on factory floor, laboratory, and office environments
• Organised, methodical, and data-driven approach to process control

• Coaching and mentoring
• Problem solving
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Material chemistry
• Formulation and recipe optimisation
• Process control and quality assurance

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