Health and Safety duties

• Proactive support for health and safety within the laboratory. This may include being required to look after a communal area as part of your duties. Comply with all current rules and ensure all required assessments are in place, approved, and in-date.
• Fully understand the safety aspects of equipment operation
• Responsible for ensuring that the following safety paperwork is in place and remains up to date, being reviewed at least annually where required: risk assessments, standard operating procedures, project training records, notifications of experiments to run out of hours
• Monitor that Standard Operating procedures and the control measures specified in risk assessments are being followed. This will include ensuring that laboratory equipment is operated in a safe manner.
• Reporting any breaches or non-compliance with H&S procedures to the relevant staff members.
• Upholding the correct waste disposal stream as governed by College and local policy for the laboratory.
• Postholders may be asked to undergo training as a First Aider and Fire Warden.

General Administration and Organisation

• Ensuring all records are accurate and kept up to date.
• Proactively maintain stocks of consumables and, when required, generate purchase order requisitions using University systems, or delegate as appropriate.
• Receiving and correctly storing consumables/ equipment and chemical reagents.
• Ensuring that the facilities are maintained in a clean, functional, and safe condition; reporting any problems through the appropriate channels.
• Adopt a proactive attitude to assisting with and implementing carbon reduction and energy saving measures.
• Maintaining relevant research lab databases/ records.

Other Duties

• Supports equality and values diversity, moderates own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.
• Any other duties commensurate with the role, as may reasonably be required.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Educated in a science or engineering subjects to degree level or equivalent experience
• Experience of digital design tools, computational modelling, 3D printing for prototyping and part production (plastic and metal)
• Preparation of data for presentations and reporting
• Experience of hands-on experimental work
• Experience of method development
• Extensive experience of similar laboratory-based work, together with familiarity with a wide range of laboratory equipment, equivalent professional qualification, or degree in a relevant STEM field.
• Proven specialist knowledge of additive manufacturing techniques, methods, and procedures gained through either extensive experience and/or formal qualifications.
• Ability to diagnose/ resolve problems and suggest solutions in own area, whilst having regard to the local and wider interests. Extensive proven practical and technical experience of own area, its operation and development.
• Ability to analyse problems and summarise key points to others, including non-specialist staff. Proactively anticipates and identifies problems/ weaknesses within own area based on own experience.
• Demonstrable ability to plan ahead, work to deadlines involving time management and strong organisational skills.
• Ability to organise and manage own work load and demonstrate flexibility in terms of work practices and requirements for.
• Able to develop and implement improvement programmes within own local, school or service area. Manages own time and sometimes small project teams to meet a service or particular project needs.
• Will prioritise and delegate work as appropriate to ensure continuity of service.
• Liaises with staff, students and technical colleagues to anticipate and understand need/ provide advice/ guidance.
• Ability to work under minimal supervision but function as part of a team.
• Proficiency in commonly used software packages.
• Understands the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
• Ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.

Informal enquiries to Peter Miles, email: p.miles@bham.ac.uk

View our staff values and behaviours here

Use of AI in applications:

We want to understand your genuine interest in the role and for the written elements of your application to accurately reflect your own communication style. Applications that rely too heavily on AI tools can appear generic and lack the detail we need to assess your skills and experience. Such applications will unlikely be progressed to interview.

We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/about/equality-diversity-inclusion.