Senior Materials Scientist/Metallurgist in Oxford

Location: Oxford or Sheffield, UK

Reports to: CTO

Remuneration: T3 - Research (£56,000-£64,400 pa)

About LAYRR

LAYRR is a deep-tech startup with a proprietary Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD)-on-Powder Platform that transforms standard, commodity powders into high-performance functional materials with broad application potential. By engineering the surface of materials at an atomic level, we maximise the performance of next-generation hardware.

The Role: Your Mission

You will own the line from what our platform can coat to what that coating means for a customer’s final product, i.e., what it does to powder flow, melt pool behaviour, density and final microstructure, and therefore to the properties a customer specifies in a real component. You will bridge nanoscale PVD coatings and real-world performance across additive manufacturing (AM), superalloys and thermal and magnetic functional materials. You are generative, practical and outcome-driven, and you can reason from a surface change all the way through to the finished part.

What You Will Own:

• Material & Surface Optimisation: Design coating architectures on our STORM platform to improve powder flow, melt pool dynamics and part density in additive manufacturing (including high-performance superalloys and light metals), while developing application pipelines in thermal interface materials (TIMs) and insulated magnet powders.
• Metallurgical translation: Connect surface and coating changes to bulk behaviour and final part performance. Own the story from powder, to sintered or printed microstructure, to the properties that decide whether a customer’s application works.
• Characterization Pipeline: Own the physical, chemical and metallurgical analysis of engineered powders, from nanoscale surface chemistry to bulk powder behaviour and final sintered/printed microstructures.
• Project Delivery: Lead technical execution on our core R&D projects, including a recently awarded 18-month Innovate UK grant.

Core Competencies & Proven Capabilities

What you can actually do matters far more to us than the letters after your name. Whether learned in industry or academia, you must demonstrate:

• Metallurgical depth: Genuine command of metallurgy in demanding metal systems. You can predict and explain how a change in surface or powder chemistry plays out in melt behaviour, microstructure, oxidation and corrosion resistance, and final mechanical performance. This is the heart of the role.
• Coating-to-customer reasoning: A track record of taking a material or surface change and connecting it to a measurable outcome in a real component, for a customer who cares about the final product.
• Applied R&D track record: Proven experience taking a material or surface engineering problem from initial hypothesis to physical validation in a lab or production environment.
• Experimental autonomy: The ability to independently design experimental matrices, isolate variables, run equipment, troubleshoot unexpected data and iterate quickly without waiting for a pre-written recipe.
• Practical powder and surface mastery: Hands-on experience with metal powders (ideally light or reactive metals such as aluminium or titanium) and an understanding of how surface chemistry drives bulk material behaviour.
• Safe lab operations: Practical experience with safety protocols for fine, reactive or combustible metal powders (inert atmosphere gloveboxes, dust explosion risk management).
• Characterisation tooling: Hands-on experience with standard microstructural and powder analytical methods (SEM/EDX, particle size analysis, tap density, flowability testing).

Valuable Experience (Nice to Have, Not Required)

• Additive Manufacturing Exposure: Practical knowledge of metal AM processes (LPBF, binder jetting) and how powder characteristics alter melt dynamics and part density.
• Thin-Film / Surface Modification: Prior exposure to Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD), Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), or gas-phase surface functionalisation.
• Adjacent Functional Materials: Familiarity with Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs) or soft/hard magnetic powder systems, alloys.
• Deliverable-Driven Projects: Track record of delivering milestones on formal grant-funded projects (e.g., Innovate UK).

Why Join LAYRR?

Engineering Value at the Atomic Scale

Our North Star is infinite material performance from a finite natural resource. We are reimagining our relationship with raw materials to ensure a better planet for future generations. By using our proprietary STORM physical vapour deposition (PVD) platform to functionalise powders at the nanoscale, we solve hard physical problems that unlock massive commercial impact.

How We Work: A Culture Built for Breakthroughs

We are building a culture designed for rapid execution and deep scientific rigour. If you thrive in high-autonomy environments where data beats hierarchy and outcomes beat presenteeism, you will fit right in.

• Radical Candour (Clarity over Comfort): We believe it is kinder to be clear than to be comfortable. We share failed experiments and ugly data immediately, treating them as vital data points rather than failures. We challenge ideas openly and attack assumptions early.
• Ruthless Focus (Outcomes over Activity): We don't measure performance by hours spent at a desk or in the lab; we measure it by impact on our primary bottlenecks. We aggressively cut noise, and protect deep-work time so you can solve complex technical problems without constant distraction.
• Extreme Ownership (No "Them", Only "Us"): In a fast-moving startup, there is no one else to pass the torch to. You own your tasks, your data and your decisions. When something fails, we don't look for excuses or point fingers - we state what went wrong, fix the underlying system and move forward.

What We Offer You

• Share options available in a fast growing company
• £1000 Annual Personal Development Budget
• 30 Days Annual Leave plus your birthday off

Right to Work

You must have, or be able to obtain, the right to work in the UK. We are not currently a licensed visa sponsor. We would consider becoming one for an exceptional candidate, so if you need sponsorship, please tell us in your application rather than ruling yourself out.