Senior Research Technician; Battery Recycling; School of Metallurgy and Materials Grade 5

School of Metallurgy and Materials

Location:

University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £30,062 to £31,900, with potential progression once in post to £35,883

Grade: 5

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to October 2028

Closing date: 8th November 2026

The University of Birmingham is a partner in HERMES (Hazardous Energy Recycling: Methods for Emerging Specialist Chemistries), a project funded by Innovate UK and led by Recyclus Group Ltd, developing a safe shredding and materials-recovery process for lithium‑metal batteries (LMBs).

Lithium‑metal batteries are used widely across offshore energy, defence, healthcare and Internet‑of‑Things applications, but have no viable commercial recycling route in the UK. Unlike lithium‑ion batteries, LMBs remain chemically reactive at end‑of‑life and present fire, explosion and emission risks under conventional processing, resulting in large unprocessed UK stockpiles. HERMES will establish optimum passivation, discharge, shredding and materials‑separation methods for reactive LMB chemistries, including lithium‑sulphur, lithium‑thionyl chloride and manganese‑oxide systems.

The post holder will support day‑to‑day operations of the HERMES project within the Energy Materials Group in the School of Metallurgy and Materials. The role will involve carrying out technical laboratory work in the safe handling and recycling of reactive battery chemistries, including battery discharge, disassembly and passivation, mechanical processing, materials separation and purification, characterisation of shredded output streams, and data collection and entry.

The post requires knowledge and skills in the field of materials, materials handling, and battery safety.

The post holder will perform technical duties in laboratories and workshops, providing technical support to the battery recycling and energy materials laboratories. They will be expected to keep up to date with developments in the research areas covered and how these may impact recycling activities. The duties require collaborative working and close liaison with academics, technical staff, students, external companies and contractors, including the project's industrial partner.

You will provide technical expertise, support and guidance in research support. You may supervise a number of technical staff but even where you do not directly supervise staff you will still be expected to act as a role model and coach others as appropriate.

You will need an in‑depth understanding of the research questions, techniques and experimental protocols. You will be able to use your in‑depth knowledge to advise on procedures, diagnose and resolve problems, and proactively suggest solutions to issues which arise. You may need to operate out of normal working hours to accommodate experimental procedures.

In order to flexibly use resource you may be offered the opportunity to work in different areas of the department or wider university.