Principal Scientist

Job Introduction

Job Description for Principal Scientist:

NNL is where you’ll experiment to help solve global challenges. As part of our Waste Management & Decommissioning capability, your work will impact the lives of generations. By finding new ways to avoid, reduce, store and treat nuclear waste, and drive down the cost of decommissioning, you’ll help to deliver cleaner energy and influence our nation’s energy future. You’ll face new challenges every day, working in unique locations on ground-breaking projects. Whichever area you specialise in this is a place to do great science for a good cause.

This role is required to provide technical leadership within the growing capability of Health and Nuclear Medicine. This is a strategically important area for NNL requiring strong technical direction and expertise to ensure the business develops a new technical capability in line with anticipated customer demand in the area, and is responsive to developments within the field.  The role will sit within the Waste and Residue Processing capability area, and will contribute expertise across the full breadth of the team’s projects.

Role Responsibility

Main Responsibilities for Principal Scientist:

• Support the Focus Area Lead and Strategic Steering Board to provide technical direction to the Health and Nuclear Medicine (H&NM) programme, proposing and agreeing Research and Development objectives and enabling the team to deliver them.
• Ensure NNL maintains an awareness of, and is responsive to developments in the field to inform development priorities for the programme.
• Provide technical oversight to the planning and delivery of all of the team’s development projects within the H&NM programme.
• Provide technical oversight and consultancy to agreed projects within the H&NM programme delivered outside of the capability, including through other teams in NNL and through external collaborators.
• Provide technical expertise to support the development of NNL’s commercial arrangements for the H&NM programme.
• Develop and maintain key relationships with national and international collaborators within industry and academia and potential customers, representing NNL in external forums as required.
• Lead or provide oversight to the Core Science Theme for Health and Nuclear Medicine.
• Take a lead role in defining and upholding safety and quality standards for the team’s H&NM projects.
• Support the Capability Manager in planning for the development of the technical capability, including knowledge, skills and facilities.
• Actively engage with knowledge management and training activities, enabling the development of others to minimise the risk to the business of the loss of key skills.
• Provide expert guidance and consultancy to the full breadth of the team’s projects as required, in waste and residue treatment and criticality control, including as a Criticality Control Officer (Gold).
• Technical accountability for all of the team’s H&NM projects.
• Principal technical lead for the H&NM programme, providing technical input and consultancy across the whole programme, including the strategic direction for the area, commercial arrangements, and external collaborations as well as development projects.

The Ideal Candidate

Essential Criteria for Principal Scientist:

• PhD in Chemistry or related field or equivalent industrial experience.
• Extensive experience of leading technical development projects within waste and residue treatment and radionuclide separation.
• Up to date knowledge of the UK nuclear medicine landscape.
• Excellent and demonstrable appreciation of the need to balance R&D objectives with customer requirements and commercial opportunities.
• Pragmatic and pro-active approach in responding to technical and organisational challenges.
• Recognised within NNL and externally as an authoritative industry expert in the field of waste and residue treatment and radionuclide separation.
• Excellent ability to communicate complex concepts to a wide range of audiences and stakeholders, adapting approach as needed.
• Extensive experience of supervising others.
• Evidence of defining and upholding exemplary standards in safety and quality.
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
• Appointed Criticality Control Officer (Gold).
• Appointed Task Supervisor.
• Ability to obtain SC level security clearance (this includes but is not limited to identity, employment, financial and criminal record checks plus 5 years’ worth of UK residency).

About the Company

Grounded in robust science and decades of experience, National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) is the authoritative voice in the UK and beyond for technological development within the nuclear power sector.

Our unparalleled understanding of the science, challenges and opportunities makes us an unrivalled authority and partner in the field, providing experts, technologies, and access to cutting-edge facilities to organisations around the world.

Harnessing potential technologies and translating them into to industry-ready solutions means our pioneering approach spearheads international improvement and technological progress.

We work on projects as small as drilling a hole to analyse underground wastes with our integrated micro drilling technology, or as large as developing state-of-the-art power systems for spacecraft, based on radioactive materials

NNL has a vision for Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (ED&I) where NNL aims to be an inclusive workplace that attracts diverse talent through transparent and equal policies and procedures. We want you and the diverse mix of people that we employ, customers that we service and stakeholders that we influence to feel valued. We encourage a workplace culture where everyone can thrive with a sense of belonging.

Recruitment Agency Notice

We operate a strict Preferred Supplier List (PSL) for the provision of recruitment services. Only agencies on our PSL may provide CVs and only when the role is released to them by our recruitment team. We will not accept unsolicited CVs from suppliers not currently on our PSL. We explicitly reserve the right to add candidate details from unsolicited CVs from non-PSL agencies into our own candidate database and to pursue/hire such candidate(s) without any obligation, financial or otherwise, to the agency concerned.

National Nuclear Laboratory