Product Development Engineer (Cartridge) - Pathogen

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Pathogen Project:

Within this ecosystem, the Pathogen Mission exemplifies EIT’s commitment to transformative science. It aims to revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases by leveraging whole genome sequencing (WGS)-based metagenomic and pathogen-specific analytical tools. This remit includes the development of a decentralised, sample-to-answer sequencing diagnostic platform for infectious diseases, enabling rapid and accurate analysis of patient samples without prior assumptions. Supported by Oracle Inc.’s cloud-computing scale and security infrastructure, the Pathogen Mission is progressing towards certified diagnostic products for deployment in laboratories, hospitals, and public health organisations worldwide.

Your Role:

At EIT we are seeking an experienced and detail orientated Product Development Engineer - Cartridge to help develop next-generation diagnostic technology. In this role, you’ll work alongside experts in microfluidics, microbiology, electronics and firmware to design, build and iterate prototype instrumentation for a point-of-care device capable of metagenomic sequencing through a microfluidic cartridge interface.

You will work closely with the Lead Engineer to mature multiple prototype cartridge concepts into a robust, integrated consumable architecture with a clear path toward future product development. This role will focus on simplifying and integrating cartridge designs, improving robustness, usability and manufacturability, and supporting the transition from individual module demonstrators toward an integrated automated platform. You will contribute directly to the development of decentralised diagnostic systems aimed at improving infectious disease detection in hospitals and public health settings worldwide.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and evolve cartridge architectures to support automated metagenomic workflows and future product development.
• Simplify and integrate multiple prototype cartridge concepts into robust consumable solutions suitable for automated operation.
• Design and integrate functional cartridge features including valves, reservoirs, seals, reagent storage, fluidic interfaces and user-facing elements.
• Work to ensure cartridge designs remain compatible with instrumentation, automation and future product objectives.
• Identify opportunities to reduce cartridge complexity, dead volume, interfaces and assembly effort while maintaining technical performance.
• Support integration of cartridges into prototype systems, resolving cartridge–instrument interface issues through hands-on experimentation and engineering.
• Design and execute structured experiments to evaluate cartridge robustness, usability, repeatability and engineering performance.
• Investigate and resolve cartridge-related failure modes including sealing, leakage, fluid transfer, reagent handling and assembly challenges.
• Contribute to improving robustness, manufacturability, usability and reliability of consumable designs through iterative engineering development.
• Support design reviews with a strong focus on practical engineering trade-offs and future product evolution.
• Maintain clear documentation of cartridge architectures, engineering decisions and design iterations.

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Degree (BEng, MEng, MSc or PhD) in Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Product Design, Microfluidics, Bioengineering or related discipline.
• Experience working across multiple engineering disciplines to mature early-stage prototypes into robust engineering systems.
• Experience developing cartridge-based, disposable or consumable products for laboratory, diagnostic or medical device applications.
• Experience taking engineering concepts through prototype development, testing, iterative refinement and maturation towards robust, manufacturable products.
• Experience simplifying and integrating complex fluidic or consumable architectures into practical engineering solutions.
• Experience balancing technical performance with practical engineering considerations such as manufacturability, assembly, usability and robustness.
• Practical experience designing and integrating mechanical and fluidic features such as reservoirs, seals, interfaces, valves or reagent handling systems into robust consumable architectures.
• Experience designing products that integrate with external systems such as instrumentation, pumps, sensors or thermal systems.
• Strong CAD skills with experience producing manufacturable designs.
• Experience planning and conducting structured experimental investigations.
• Practical understanding of tolerance stack-up, sealing strategies, mechanical interfaces and design considerations affecting assembly and reliability.
• Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills.
• Comfortable working collaboratively across multidisciplinary engineering and scientific teams.

We recognise that candidates may not meet every listed criterion. If your experience aligns with most of the requirements and you are motivated by the mission, we encourage you to apply.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Experience developing disposable cartridges or consumables for automated laboratory systems.
• Familiarity with sample preparation workflows such as nucleic acid extraction, host depletion or amplification.
• Experience integrating fluid handling components such as valves, membranes or reagent storage features.
• Understanding of contamination control considerations for diagnostic consumables.
• Experience applying Design for Manufacture (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) principles during product development.
• Experience consolidating or simplifying multiple prototype concepts into more integrated engineering solutions.
• Familiarity with rapid prototyping methods including machining, 3D printing or soft lithography.
• Exposure to regulated product development or medical device design.
• Experience working in early-stage product development environments.

Key Attributes:

• Enjoys developing practical engineering solutions that bridge research and product development.
• Hands-on and comfortable building, testing and iterating physical prototypes.
• Strong systems thinker who naturally considers how consumables interact with instrumentation, users and future product requirements.
• Comfortable balancing innovation with practicality, recognising when a robust engineering solution is more valuable than a technically perfect one.
• Methodical and evidence-driven, using experimental data to guide design decisions.
• Collaborative and comfortable working across engineering, biology and product development teams.
• Detail-oriented, with a strong focus on robustness, usability and repeatability.
• Comfortable balancing technical innovation with pragmatic engineering trade-offs.

Our Benefits:

• Travel allowance
• Bonus

• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

 

Working Together – What It Involves:

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. In certain cases, we can consider sponsorship, and this will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate).
• This is an onsite role