Lead Process Engineer - Scale-Up and Manufacturing

Help Build the Future of a Global Industry

A&B Smart Materials is an Oxford University–based materials science venture developing bio-based and/or biodegradable superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) to replace today’s fossil-based plastics.

SAPs are the “magic-like” 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.

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 Earth Scale 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.

Our advisors include the former Managing Director of the world’s largest superabsorbent polymer company, alongside other world-class leaders with deep experience across SAPs, hygiene, chemical manufacturing and agriculture.

We are hiring our first process engineer
: the person who will take a superabsorbent polymer that works today at laboratory scale and establish how it can be made reliably, reproducibly and affordably at pilot scale and beyond.

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

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. You will own the techno‑economic picture that tells the research team which processes are worth pursuing, and you will be the person who says early and with evidence which steps in our current route will not survive scale.

This is a startup, so you will wear several hats. Alongside the process work, you will source input materials, model our process economics, select and manage toll manufacturers and, in time, help specify and build our own pilot and production plants. We also expect you to be comfortable stepping into commercial conversations, because at our stage the technical and commercial questions are the same questions.

• Own the techno‑economic analysis. Build and defend the cost and process models – mass and energy balances, yields, utilities, capital and operating costs from laboratory batch through pilot to full production volume – that tell the R&D team which routes are worth pursuing and give them a cost ceiling to design against, not performance targets alone.
• 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 and develop our process at pilot scale. Execute batches, establish and document operating windows, improve yield and reproducibility, and produce…