Senior Research Technician; Battery Recycling; School of Metallurgy and Materials Grade 5 Job Birmingham area,England UK

Job Description Position Details

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

Background

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.

Role Summary

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.

Main Duties

Safe handling, discharge, disassembly and passivation of reactive lithium-metal and li-ion cells and batteries prior to mechanical processing.

Supporting the operation of laboratory-scale shredding and sorting equipment, including work under controlled and inert atmospheres and within the UoB battery safety chamber.

Mechanical separation and sorting of shredded battery output streams, including sieving, density, and magnetic separation techniques.

Preparation and characterisation of recovered materials, using techniques such as SEM, XRD, XRF and ICP-OES.

Collection, entry and management of experimental data, and maintenance of associated laboratory records and databases.

Support for gas and emissions sampling and monitoring during processing trials.

You will be responsible for assisting in managing experiments and laboratories used by multiple projects.

You will use your in-depth knowledge of methods and procedures to advise on techniques and experimental procedures being used by researchers and/or students. This will involve communicating with colleagues at a range of levels and inexperienced students.

You will need to be able to diagnose and resolve problems and suggest solutions in regard to techniques and experiments.

Carry out specialist technical and experimental procedures which will need you to use your judgment to assess the correct technique to use, and to consider how these may be improved, referring to your manager for approval on any proposed changes.

You will need to maintain accurate records of all techniques and experimental procedures you carry out, and for any other research activities you may be involved in including results.

Ensure compliance with legislation relevant to the area of research/activity.

Comply with and…