Product Development Engineer: Viridys Bio

About Viridys

Agriculture and food is the value chain that keeps us alive… but right now, it’s underserving both human health and the environment. Too much is lost to pests, disease and waste, and too many decisions along that chain are still made on guesswork rather than good information. We think that’s fixable.

We’re an Exeter-based biotech startup building biological sensors that give growers and the wider food chain the insight to act early: a passive device that changes colour in the presence of the volatile compounds plants and produce release when they’re under stress. Done right, that means less waste, lower costs, fewer chemicals, and a more resilient food system.

We raised our pre-seed earlier this year and secured significant grant funding to build our first operational prototype. We’re now looking for someone to join our team who believes in what we’re building and why – and wants to help us turn that vision into a reality.

This is a rare opportunity to join an innovative, up-and-coming deep-tech company at a pivotal early stage, as an early hire with real scope to shape both the product and the business as we grow – and share in that upside through equity in the company.

This role takes sensing biology from the lab to a physical product – operating in commercial contexts, from glasshouses to stores and packing lines. As our Product Development Engineer you’ll run device development end to end; working with growers, packers and operational partners to understand what the device needs to do in the real world; selecting and characterising materials; designing and building prototypes;

proving they perform under real environmental conditions; and getting them manufactured at batch scale.

It’s a hands‑on build role in a small team, with real ownership of the engineering decisions. We’re looking for someone who can lean into the wider business need and is happy to  muck in  if the moment calls for it, not just work strictly to a fixed brief.

In 12-18 months, success looks like: you’ll have taken the device from lab bench to a batch‑manufactured, field‑tested prototype – validated in simulated environments and ready to support our operational pilots and our next funding round.

• Get in front of growers, packers and operational partners to understand how the device needs to perform in the real world and use that to shape the design, not just validate it
• Characterise candidate materials and select what works
• Design and build prototypes, and iterate them
• Test performance across environmental conditions to establish what the device can promise in the field
• Take designs through to small‑batch manufacture, working with an external manufacturer
• Support trials and feed results back into the design

Level of experience and  fit  matter more to us than the specific qualification. A PhD with some independent R&D or engineering experience, or a Master’s or Bachelor’s with an equivalent level of hands‑on experience gained in industry or academia would be ideal. More than anything, we’re looking for someone hungry and excited to build something that matters – and help shape the business, not just do a job within it.

Essential

• A background in materials science, polymer science, biophysics, mechanical engineering or device/product engineering. A multidisciplinary background spanning more than one of these is particularly welcome
• Experience designing and running characterisation experiments across multiple variables. Specifying and interpreting a test matrix, not just executing one someone else produced
• Willing and able to work directly with growers, packers and operational partners – gathering requirements from the real world and translating them into a design brief
• Practica…