Lead Process Engineer - Scale-Up and Manufacturing

Help Build the Future of a Global Industry

A&B Smart Materials is an Oxford University–based materials science venture developing bio-based and/or biodegradable superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) to replace today’s fossil-based plastics. SAPs are the “magic-like” absorbent cores inside diapers, menstrual pads and incontinence products, and the “water-storage crystals” that help soil retain moisture in agriculture. Today’s SAPs are persistent plastics, and regulatory pressure, consumer demand and the scale of the microplastics crisis are making sustainable alternatives increasingly urgent. Our goal is simple and ambitious: to replace the synthetic superabsorbents that dominate a $9B market today, expected to reach $17B by 2035, with materials that achieve the essential trifecta of top performance, competitive pricing and large-scale manufacturability.

This is a generational opportunity to reinvent an essential material and make sustainable SAPs the new standard.

The Opportunity

We are hiring our first process engineer: the person who will take a superabsorbent polymer that works today at laboratory scale and establish how it can be made reliably, reproducibly and affordably at pilot scale and beyond. This is a hands‑on, on‑site role at the point where chemistry meets manufacturing. Working directly with our CEO and CTO, you will run our material at pilot scale, produce the quantities our commercial partners need for their trials, and feed manufacturability and cost constraints back into the research programme before the chemistry is locked in.

What You Will Do

• Own the techno‑economic analysis.
• Build and defend the cost and process models – mass and energy balances, yields, utilities, capital and operating costs from laboratory batch through pilot to full production volume.
• Own raw material sourcing intelligence.
• Run and develop our process at pilot scale.
• Own the scale‑up assessment of our chemistry.
• Develop specifications and quality systems.
• Own process safety for what we operate.
• Lead technology transfer and select tollers.
• Drive the manufacturing route decision.
• Support the commercial team.
• Be hands‑on in the labs.
• Build the function.

What We Are Looking For

We care more about what you have actually built, scaled and delivered than about a prescribed number of years. This role calls for someone who has already done it: you have taken chemical processes out of the laboratory and made them work at industrial scale, on industrial equipment, to industrial standards. You should bring a degree in chemical engineering, chemistry, materials chemistry or a closely related discipline, disciplined documentation habits, and the ability to work safely with hazardous materials and to write and apply risk assessments. SAP experience is a major advantage.

Proven industrial scale‑up experience (required): You should have taken at least one chemical process from laboratory or pilot scale into industrial production – larger equipment, industrial volumes, real operating conditions and real commercial consequences.

Commercial judgement is part of the job. We want someone who thinks in $/kg and in what a customer will accept, not only in yield and conversion.

How you work

Comfortable working on a moving target – our formulations are still developing and your priorities will change with them. A genuine “roll your sleeves up” mentality – no ego, just action; you will run the batch yourself, and tell the science team what they do not want to hear, with the evidence to back it.

Our Culture and What We Offer

We are an ambitious, collaborative, results‑oriented startup, for people who take ownership, move with urgency and want to do the best work of their careers. We offer meaningful equity in a company at the start of its scale‑up, plus 28 days of paid holiday annually.