Engineering Manager, Scientific Software

Description

The company is privately owned, was founded in 2001 as a spin-out of the University of Bristol by CTO Professor Andrew Humphris, and builds innovative products for semiconductor customers worldwide.

The team is a software and algorithm engineering team, though customers know its output as the Data Analysis product. It builds the applications that turn raw atomic force microscope (AFM) scan data into 3D measurements.

The software runs inside semiconductor fabs on real 3D height-profile data captured at atomic scale, so the work demands robust, reliable software that customers can trust.

This role combines hands-on technical leadership with people management. You would shape the software strategy and drive delivery across a growing, cross-functional organisation.

The team's image-analysis application consolidates several data streams from the microscope, flattens and corrects scan images, recognises scanned features and measures their height, and runs statistical analysis over large sets of measurements.

The fab has no internet access and there is no cloud service, so the algorithms, application and visualisation must work fully on their own.

Interviews run Monday to Friday, 9am to 4:30pm UK time, with flexible global scheduling. The first stage is a 45 minute remote meeting covering your experience and technical ability. The second stage is a 2.5 hour onsite session on technical, presentation and communication skills, ways of working, and time to learn more about the company.

If eye contact makes you uncomfortable, say so at the start of the interview. For remote interviews you may turn your camera off after the greeting until the end.

Onsite interviews are casual, so informal dress is fine.

The company uses AI only to transcribe interviews. No AI takes part in any decision, and real people make all hiring decisions based on the conversation.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of scientific software engineers so they can deliver high-quality, fault-tolerant software in a time-sensitive product setting.
• Own the team's software strategy and shape how the team works, along with how the image-processing algorithms, application architecture and tooling evolve.
• Coach team members through 1:1s, appraisals, hiring and career development.
• Work with project leads to plan, track and report progress, and fit the team's work into wider programme plans.
• Manage technical debt pragmatically, weighing delivery speed against long-term maintainability.
• Refine engineering processes using Agile and Lean practices so the team keeps improving.
• Stay hands-on where capacity allows: review code, unblock algorithm and architecture decisions, and keep close to the data.
• Work with the R&D team to turn sound image-processing methods into a quality product. Guide decisions on flattening, feature recognition and masking, skew correction, height measurement and the statistical analysis of measurements.
• Make sure the application, its RabbitMQ communication interface and its data visualisation run reliably in an offline, on-premises fab with no cloud dependency.
• Collaborate closely with the Software Project Lead, R&D, Systems Engineering, Product and Applications teams to keep priorities aligned.
• Manage external partners where they support delivery.
• Hold engineers accountable for code they ship, whether they wrote it or generated it with the agentic development tools the company is adopting with Claude.

Requirements

• Experience leading and developing technical teams, including appraisals, career development and recruitment.
• A strong hands-on software development background, ideally including image processing, computer vision or scientific data analysis.
• Strong Python development skills gained in industry.
• Practical experience applying Agile and Lean methods.
• A good grasp of the software development lifecycle and best practice.
• Experience working with external partners or suppliers.
• Project management experience.
• Clear written and spoken English, plus a collaborative, pragmatic and self-motivated way of working.
• At least 5 years of software development experience and at least 5 years in technical leadership or people management.
• Experience developing software that processes and visualises 3D imaging or scientific data.
• A background in metrology, microscopy, semiconductors or other complex engineering products.
• Experience from another scientific or technical discipline, backed by strong software experience.
• Experience using AI-assisted or agentic coding tools, such as GitHub Copilot or Claude Code, to improve development speed and quality in a professional setting.

Conditions

Hybrid working is offered from day one where possible. During your first three months you would be on site four days a week at Abingdon and remote one day a week. After probation this usually settles at about three days in the office to two remote.

Salary is £70,000 to £80,000, depending on experience.

The company welcomes varied backgrounds and will make reasonable adjustments in recruitment if you ask.

Recruitment agencies: the company only works with approved agencies and does not accept unsolicited agency CVs. Do not send candidate details in response to this advert or approach company employees. The company is not liable for fees on unsolicited CVs.

Benefits

• Death in service cover and private health care.
• A discretionary annual bonus scheme.
• A generous EMI Share scheme.
• An annual salary review.
• The chance to work on genuinely innovative semiconductor technology.