Technical specialist confocal microscope quality control, The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

The Crick Advanced Light Microscopy (CALM) facility maintains over 20 confocal microscopes within the core facility and around the building. To keep these instruments in top working order we have created the position of ‘Confocal Microscope QC Specialist’ to perform regular quality control testing. The successful candidate will work with local “super-users” to understand performance issues, coordinate service engineer visits for repairs, and follow-up to ensure that repairs have been successful.

Quality control is an important aspect of the service provided by any research facility. This helps to ensure the reproducibility of results and avoid wasting precious resources, including staff time and lab consumables. The Confocal QC Engineer will regularly inspect each confocal microscope under our care. They will perform a standard series of tests on these instruments to assess system performance using criteria including instrument sensitivity, resolution, and precision of movement. Inspections will also entail cleaning each instrument and updating software and service packs as required. If significant performance issues are detected, or if local users report problems, the Confocal QC Engineer will liaise with service engineers from the relevant microscope company to arrange for repairs. Following service engineer visits, the Confocal QC Engineer will test equipment to ensure that repairs have been completed to an acceptable standard and record the system performance to use as a reference for future tests. Finally, the Confocal QC Engineer will serve as a first point of contact, linking local “super-users” of each instrument to the support team of the light microscopy core facility.

The contract is full-time and permanent. Further details can be found here:

https://www.crick.ac.uk/careers-study/vacancies/2021-09-27-confocal-microscope-quality-control-specialist
Closing date 15 October 2021, 22:59 BST