Principal Scientist

Oxford Medical Products is a UK-based medical device company dedicated to developing innovative solutions that address significant unmet clinical needs. OMP have developed a gastro-retentive hydrogel being used across a number of clinical indications. Our flagship programme, Sirona, is a breakthrough medical device targeting treatment of obesity and overweight a condition affecting billions of people worldwide. We combine rigorous science with a patient-centred approach to bring safe, effective therapies to market across global healthcare systems.

Sirona is now in late clinical development with commercialisation planned for 2027.

This programme is at an exciting inflection point: we are seeking industrial and academic partnerships to accelerate its development. The Principal Scientist will play a central role in shaping its scientific direction and supporting industrial scale up for commercial manufacturing.

Alongside Sirona, we are developing a drug delivery platform with strong potential across multiple therapeutic indications. This platform is currently in the earlier stages of development with multiple licensing discussions ongoing.

Joining Oxford Medical Products means contributing directly to a mission that matters. We are a collaborative, ambitious team that values curiosity, precision, and a shared commitment to improving patient outcomes.

We are seeking an outstanding Principal Scientist to join our growing R&D team. This is a pivotal scientific leadership role at the interface of chemistry, chemical and biomedical engineering, biomaterials, and pharmaceutical and medicinal sciences. You will work closely with the R&D team to maximise impact, reduce reliance on external resources, and build internal capability across formulation, engineering, and drug delivery science.

The successful candidate will act as the subject-matter expert bridging discovery science, process development and commercial manufacturing scale up for these novel materials.

Breadth of expertise is valued, but we equally welcome applications from exceptional scientists with deep knowledge in any of the core domains. We value both character and technical expertise.

• Expertise in polymer science and polymer chemistry, with deep understanding of polymerisation mechanisms, structure–property relationships, rheology, and material performance.
• Proven experience translating lab‑scale polymer processes into pilot and commercial manufacturing, with demonstrated success in process scale‑up and industrial implementation.
• Contributing to engineering-adjacent activities such as mould design and 3D printing.
• Strong knowledge of chemical engineering principles including reaction engineering, heat and mass transfer, mixing dynamics, and commercial scale dependencies.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with polymer characterisation and analytical techniques.
• Experience designing and executing process optimisation strategies, including Design of Experiments, root cause analysis, and statistical process control.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex manufacturing and scale‑up challenges, including yield loss, variability, fouling, purification bottlenecks, and material inconsistency.
• Knowledge of industrial manufacturing environments, including batch processing, continuous processing, and external manufacturing partnerships.
• Working knowledge of quality and regulatory frameworks relevant to advanced materials, ISO
  13485, GLP and GMP.
• Excellent cross‑functional leadership skills, with the ability to work effectively across R&D, manufacturing, quality, regulatory, and commercial teams.
• Strong project leadership and stakeholder management skills, with experience driving programmes from development through industrial transfer.

• Lead advanced research programmes, demonstrating technical mastery, creativity, and scientific leadership across one or more fields — biomaterials, scale up, chemical and biomedical engineering.
• Lead and contribute to our core programme: the standalone hydrogel‑based medical device for obesity and also the hydrogel‑based drug delivery system.
• Lead a small…