Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will manage an X-ray diffraction facility with multiple diffractometers for powder, thin-film, and capillary measurements. You will align, calibrate, maintain, repair, and commission instruments; establish measurement standards and quality control; support difficult measurements; train and certify users; maintain documentation and structured metadata; and oversee radiation safety compliance.
Requirements
- 5+ years of hands-on experience operating and maintaining X-ray diffractometers.
- Strong XRD experience across powder, thin-film, and capillary or transmission work.
- Proficiency in phase identification, Rietveld refinement, and quantitative analysis.
- Experience maintaining several instruments, ideally from more than one vendor.
- Ability to troubleshoot hardware and determine when repair or external service is needed.
- Careful documentation and metadata practices.
- Ability to support many users in a busy lab while maintaining good practice.
- PhD in materials science, physics, chemistry, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Responsibilities
- Align, calibrate, and control configuration and uptime of facility instruments.
- Maintain reference standards and a regular quality-control schedule.
- Perform and support difficult measurements involving non-routine geometries, weakly scattering or air-sensitive samples, thin films, and non-ambient stages.
- Troubleshoot, maintain, and repair instruments; coordinate service contracts and vendor visits.
- Commission new instruments through site preparation, acceptance testing, and comparison against existing instruments.
- Train and certify scientists and technicians, review early runs, and provide support.
- Maintain SOPs, measurement recipes, and data-reduction conventions.
- Ensure raw data, instrument state, calibration status, and sample metadata are consistently recorded in a structured format.
- Manage X-ray equipment registration, compliance, interlock testing, surveys, and compressed gas and cryogen handling.
Benefits
- Equity
- Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates