Senior Optics Manager in Abingdon

Benefits: £65,000 to £83,000 (depending on experience), 25 days annual leave, death in service and private health care benefits, personal pension contributions of 4% with salary sacrifice and a generous EMI Share scheme.

Based in Abingdon, Oxford, UK, we are a high calibre team of 100 plus people and we are growing fast. We are backed by global financial and industry investors including Applied Ventures, the strategic venture arm of the industry leading equipment company.

About the role: You’re joining a small, specialist optics team, so this role is hands-on by design. You’re combining leadership with real technical delivery, especially early on as the team continues to grow.

• Leading and supporting a small optics team, including career development, mentoring, training, appraisals, and recruitment.
• Providing hands-on technical leadership, setting quality standards and actively contributing to day-to-day delivery.
• Working closely with senior leadership to shape and evolve the company’s optics strategy, including defining and managing the tools the team needs to operate effectively.
• Shaping continuous improvement across products, processes, tools, and people.
• Collaborating with architects and project leads to support successful project delivery.
• Engaging with stakeholders across technical teams, departments, and functions.
• Selecting, contracting, and managing external partners to extend capability or short-term capacity where needed.
• Balancing delivery and leadership — ensuring work gets done while building a strong, capable team for the future.

Who we are looking for:

• Self-motivated and able to support and inspire a team to do their best work.
• Knowledge of optical design best practices and applying these pragmatically and collaboratively.
• Excellent communication (verbal and written) skills in English.
• Circa 3 years people management.
• Around 5+ years experience working in industry as an optical engineer, where role has involved hands on optics, integration with custom mechanics, working with optical models (e.g. Zemax, or similar) and data analysis (e.g. Matlab, Python).
• Experience building optical systems into products – considering manufacturability, alignment, stability etc.
• An understanding of product lifecycle management (requirements reviewing, design reviews, etc.).

Nice to have:

• We use a matrix approach with project leads supporting projects, however a level of project management experience is beneficial.
• Interferometer design and optimisation.
• JIRA or similar tool tracking software.
• Working with external partners as part of delivery, including contractors and suppliers (for selecting and customising optics).

Education / Qualifications:

• Either a degree in Optics or related engineering discipline (Preferably CEng or similar recognition of ongoing development / Other scientific/technical disciplines considered if backed by relevant experience).
• Or a clear equivalent path through relevant apprenticeship or accumulated experience.

Attributes:

• Self-management: Able to work independently, setting priorities for own work based upon the company goals and targets.
• Teamwork: Engages with other members of the company to bring the best solutions to the problem.
• Recognise the value that fellow company members bring to enhance own abilities.
• Supports colleagues with their tasks when critical to the company goals.
• Impact and Influence: Establishes themselves as the knowledge centre in their own field.
• Ownership & Initiative: React and address both short- and medium-term issues and proactively takes action to solve them.
• Results Orientation: Focus on the company goal, avoid distraction, making timely decisions to achieve the target.

A bit about us: Infinitesima is a privately owned company founded in 2001, as a spin-out of the University of Bristol, by CTO Professor Andrew Humphris. Our dynamic team of scientists and engineers is focussed on enabling the next generation of semiconductor devices through delivery of innovative products to customers around the world. We look forward to building a strong, collaborative environment that fosters innovation and growth. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and aim to create a fair, supportive recruitment process. To keep things clear, this role needs someone who already has the permanent right to work in the UK.

Interview Process: We use AI only to transcribe our interviews so we can focus fully on you instead of scribbling notes. The AI does not take part in any decision making at any stage. All hiring decisions are made by real humans based on the conversation we have with you.

Location and work pattern: All of our new UK team members are asked to work on site here at Abingdon during their first three months with us. We offer flexible, hybrid working where possible upon completion of probation.