Chemical Process Engineer – Scale-Up and Manufacturing

We are hiring our first process engineer to take our chemistry from the laboratory to industrial scale. You will need a degree in chemical engineering and industry experience in scale-up and techno-economic analysis. We are open on seniority. Superabsorbent polymer experience is a bonus.

💼 Competitive salary, 📊 meaningful equity and 🚀 massive upside – backed by world-class climate and deep-tech investors – in a role working directly with the CEO, with a clear path to leading our process engineering.

Location: Oxford, UK – Begbroke Science Park (on-site)

Employment: Full-time, permanent

Start date: Immediate – as soon as possible

Visa sponsorship: Available for exceptional candidates

Help Build the Future of a Global Industry

A&B Smart Materials is a materials science venture based at the University of Oxford Begbroke Science Park, developing bio-based and/or biodegradable superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) to replace today’s fossil-based plastics.

SAPs are almost magical materials: a single gram can absorb hundreds of grams of water. They are the 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.

Why A&B Smart Materials?

We recently closed a heavily oversubscribed $2M pre-seed round, backed by an exceptional group of investors including Sake Bosch, caesar., Living Hope VC, Archipelago Ventures, Triple Impact Ventures, Cranfield University Seed Fund and Oxford Seed Fund, alongside leading business angels from the Cambridge Capital Group and Oxford Innovation Finance.

A&B Smart Materials was named in the UK Startups 100 2026, won the Planet Positive Award at MRE 2026, and one of our founders has been recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30. We are supported by Chemstars, the EarthScale Accelerator and the Green Tech Legal Collaborative.

We have also signed a deal with one of the world’s largest chemical companies. Achieving this at our stage is an exceptional milestone and a strong validation of our technology, team and commercial momentum.

We have some of the best advisors in the industry. They include the former Managing Director, the former Head of Research and Development North America and the former Head of Production and Technology of the world’s third-largest superabsorbent polymer producer, industry veterans who have spent their careers working on superabsorbent polymers, and the inventor behind a key patent of one of our competitors.

Our mission is to make sustainable SAPs the global standard.

The Opportunity

We are hiring our first process engineer: an ambitious chemical engineer who will take our superabsorbent polymers from the laboratory to very large scale. We are looking for the best people with the most ambition.

You will sit at the centre of the company, between our chemistry team, our partners and our commercial team. You will help the chemistry team make the right technical choices, build the models that our investors and the chemical companies we work with rely on, join commercial calls, and run our initial scale-up and then our very large-scale production, with toll manufacturers and/or in our own plants.

This is a hands-on, on-site role at the point where chemistry meets manufacturing. Working directly with our CEO and research team, 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.

We are open on seniority. Your title, responsibilities and level of influence will reflect the experience you bring: from an engineer with a few years in industry who wants to grow fast, to an experienced engineer who can lead our process engineering function.

Our formulations are still in active development and we are scaling at the same time. That combination is demanding, and it is exactly why this role matters.

This is a startup, so you will wear several hats, from sourcing input materials to, in time, helping specify and build our own pilot and production plants. We are looking to fill this role immediately.

What You Will Do

· Own the techno-economic models. Build and defend the cost and process models that our investors and the chemical companies we work with rely on: mass and energy balances, yields, utilities, capital and operating costs from laboratory batch through pilot to full production volume. The same models tell our research team which routes are worth pursuing and give them a cost ceiling to design against.

· Own raw material sourcing intelligence. Understand which grades of our input materials exist, what they cost, who supplies them, at what volume and in which geographies, and feed that reality back into formulation choices.

· Run our initial scale-up. Execute batches, establish and document operating windows, improve yield and reproducibility, and produce material to specification for internal testing and partner trials.

· Guide the chemistry team’s technical choices. Work side by side with our chemists, identify the steps in the current route that will not survive scale, quantify the risk, and propose alternatives early enough to matter.

· Develop specifications and quality systems. Define analytical and quality control methods, in-process controls, batch records and product specifications suitable for supply to industrial customers and their audits.

· Own process safety for what we operate. Risk assessment, COSHH, safe handling of reagents, solvents and combustible dusts, and the safe operation of our pilot equipment.

· Lead our very large-scale up. Prepare the technical package required to run our process on a third party’s equipment, assess and select toll manufacturers, lead trials with them, and scale our production with tollers and/or ourselves.

· Drive the manufacturing route decision. Provide the technical and economic basis for how we produce at commercial scale, and specify, source and commission the pilot and production equipment that follows.

· Be on commercial calls. Be the technical voice on calls with customers, partners, suppliers and investors, stand behind our cost and capacity claims, and work closely with our partners, including some of the world’s largest chemical companies.

· Be hands-on in the lab. Get on the bench alongside the science team when it helps – running chemistry, supporting scale-up experiments and troubleshooting batches yourself.

· Grow with the company. Capture process know-how as defensible intellectual property and, for more senior appointments, recruit and lead process engineers and technicians as we grow.

What We Are Looking For

We care more about what you have actually done as a chemical engineer than about years served.

You should bring a degree in chemical engineering and experience working as a chemical engineer in industry, for example in process development, scale-up or manufacturing.

You should also have:

· Hands-on involvement in scaling up a chemical process, from the laboratory to pilot or production scale.

· Experience building techno-economic analyses or cost models, and confidence defending the assumptions.

· Practical process engineering skills: mass and energy balances, equipment selection and process safety.

· Disciplined documentation habits and the ability to work safely with hazardous materials.

· The ability to explain technical constraints in commercial language to customers, suppliers and investors.

Experience We Value

None of these are required, but we particularly value experience with:

· Taking a process all the way into industrial production, technology transfer to toll manufacturers, or commissioning equipment.

· Superabsorbent polymer process development, production, scale-up or manufacturing engineering, across conventional, bio-based, biodegradable or otherwise sustainable technologies.

· Hydrogels, cellulose ethers, starch derivatives, hydrocolloids, polyacrylates or comparable specialty polymers.

· Working for or alongside a major SAP producer, chemical manufacturer, hygiene or agricultural business, and their quality and regulatory expectations.

· An early-stage startup or deep-tech commercialisation environment.

· German, Mandarin or Japanese, for work with international partners.

How You Work

· Ambitious. You want to be the best at what you do, and you want to build something big.

· Hands-on. No ego, just action: you run the batch yourself.

· Commercially minded. You think in cost per kilogram and in what a customer will accept, not only in yield and conversion.

· Candid. You tell the science team what they do not want to hear, with the evidence to back it.

· Credible. You are as comfortable on a commercial call with a multinational or an investor as with a contractor on site.

· Comfortable with change. Our formulations are still developing, and your priorities will change with them.

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.

· Comprehensive health insurance and 28 days of paid holiday annually.

· Access to world-class investors, advisors and industry leaders, and close collaboration with one of the world’s largest chemical companies.

Join Us

Application form: https://tally.so/r/2jazKb