Higher Scientist – Viral Vaccines Standards

The MHRA is transforming. Through enabling innovation, making the right judgements of the benefits and risks of medical products and forging the right partnerships in the UK and internationally, it aims to deliver world class regulation and improved outcomes for UK patients. We are currently looking for an experienced Higher Scientist – Viral Vaccines Standards to join our Standards Lifecycle Team within the Science, Research & Innovation group. Within a week of working here, your day could look like this: providing technical expertise and administrative support to enable the timely delivery of reference material projects in the Viral Vaccines area, supporting the development of innovative reference materials through assay development and testing, as well as collaboration with others in the wider group, supporting the running of large multi-laboratory studies that are used to demonstrate fitness for purpose of candidate reference materials and contributing to the preparation of comprehensive written reports to support establishment and implementation of new or replacement standards, working with colleagues in Quality Assurance to ensure that projects managed by the team are compliant with relevant quality management systems.  The successful candidate will have a BSc degree in a relevant scientific discipline combined with experience working in a laboratory and have a broad knowledge of the technical field in which viral vaccine standards are used and practical experience in standardisation of assays used to evaluate vaccines or the response to immunisation.  In addition, you will be comfortable with working collaboratively with the team and other scientific staff groups, have an understanding of the principles and practices of working with infectious micro-organisms in a containment laboratory, have experience of developing and running assays for biological activity including assays requiring viral growth and neutralisation.