R&D Physicist (Software)

A broad and varied role providing scientific capabilities from software development of control and analysis applications, to optics laboratory-based measurement.

About Bentham Instruments

Bentham is a small but well-established (almost 50 year old) company that designs and manufactures bespoke light measurement solutions for customers across the world. Our instruments can be found in laboratories worldwide, on mountain tops and even the arctic.

The Opportunity

We are seeking to expand our R&D department with bright individuals! This particular advertisement is for a physicist to join our research and development team in a varied but often software-heavy role. Join us and use your development skills to build software to drive experiments or analyse scientific data, or even contribute to the firmware that is embedded in our devices. Work in our optics laboratories to perform experiments towards the development of prototype hardware. Research possible technologies for our new products.

As a small and agile company, our research and development activities in the field of light measurement are very varied. You may be sometimes be asked to work on cutting edge optics, to develop firmware to drive a new optical instrument, or to develop a new utility to simplify a measurement or calculation... and sometimes to delve into an unfamiliar programming language to fix an old bug in a piece of software that has been working for 20 years and now unexpectedly does not. There are always puzzles to solve, new and old.

We offer a competitive salary and benefits package including 23 days of holidays (+bank holidays)

Main Duties and Responsibilities

  • Develop scientific control or analysis software and firmware, both customer-facing and internal, to meet set requirements using modern programming languages
  • Trial your software on prototype hardware in an optical laboratory setting.
  • Design, setup and perform optics laboratory based experiments and measurements
  • Develop experiment-specific scipts to perform and evaluate optical experiments and measurements
  • Further develop or amend existing software using a variety of programming languages (e.g. C, C++, Python, JavaScript, Delphi)
  • Collaborate with other developers via version control tools such as git/github
  • Contribute to the design of new products and measurement techniques.

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of activities, but rather an outline of the main areas of responsibility. In addition to the duties and responsibilities, the jobholder may be required to perform other assigned duties from time to time. However such duties will be reasonable in relation to the employee’s skills, abilities, status etc.

Experience / Qualifications

Candidates must have:

  • a degree in Physics (2:1 or above)
  • expertise in programming at least one of Python or C++ and at least one year of programming experience beyond a programming course. Personal projects are counted, as are open source contributions. 
  • excellent communication skills
  • experience in working in an optics laboratory is preferred
  • ability to work safely in a laboratory environment

How to apply

Please send your CV and cover letter to personnel@bentham.co.uk