Job Description

This role works within Cambium Analytica's method development pipeline and documentation framework, contributing controlled method documents, validation protocols, and verification studies under ISO 17025. The Senior Scientist partners closely with the production analytical team to ensure methods transition cleanly from development into routine use, with documentation that supports accreditation and client-facing quality expectations.

We are looking for an experienced analytical chemist with hands-on depth across multiple platforms, familiarity with natural products matrices, and a temperament that combines creative problem-solving with analytical precision. Equally important, this role requires someone who can hold scientific rigor and commercial awareness in balance — understanding that methods are also services, that development effort has to justify itself against market demand, and that prioritization decisions need to be communicated clearly to leadership. The Senior Scientist operates with a high degree of autonomy and is expected to drive methods to completion while staying aligned with the broader direction of the business.

1. Method Development, Validation & Verification

• Lead development, optimization, validation, and verification of analytical methods across dietary ingredients, botanicals, functional foods, and related natural product matrices.

• Execute verification and validation of compendial methods (USP, FCC, AOAC, and equivalent) with rigorous adherence to ISO 17025 requirements.
• Develop or optimize in-house methods where compendial methods do not exist, are inadequate for a given matrix, or can be materially improved for accuracy, precision, throughput, or turnaround time.
• Adhere to compendial validation frameworks and study plans that meet scientific, regulatory, and client-facing requirements.
• Define technical requirements, analytical constraints, and success criteria for each method up front, rather than iterating blindly.

• Evaluate project feasibility, risk, instrument time, reagent availability, and reference standard requirements before committing to a development path.

2. Method Design for Scale & Reuse

• Design methods with reusability and scaleability in mind — leveraging shared sample preparation, chromatographic conditions, and detection strategies where appropriate to reduce redundant development work.
• Identify opportunities where a single validated approach can serve multiple product categories (food, dietary supplements, ingredients, cosmetics) and prioritize those accordingly.

Evaluate and select instrumentation, columns, reference standards, and consumables that support long-term maintainability rather than create one-off dependencies.

• Balance analytical performance, operational practicality, and cost when choosing between alternative method approaches.

3. Commercial Judgment & Leadership Communication

• Evaluate proposed method development work not only on scientific merit, but on market demand, client-facing applicability, and fit within Cambium Analytica's service menu — recognizing that R&D effort is a finite resource that must be directed where it creates commercial value.
• Partner with Commercial, Operations, and leadership to prioritize the method development pipeline against real business signals: sales pipeline, client requests, regulatory drivers, and competitive positioning.
• Distinguish between methods worth developing as scalable services and methods that only make sense as bespoke one-off work — and make the case for either path clearly.
• Communicate priorities, progress, risks, and trade-offs to leadership in language that is accurate, concise, and decision-ready — without either oversimplifying the science or burying the business implications.
• Translate between the academic rigor of method development and the commercial realities of a contract lab, helping teams understand when a method is "good enough" to transfer and when it genuinely isn't.

• Represent R&D perspectives in cross-functional discussions with Commercial, Quality, and Operations — advocating for scientific integrity while staying open to legitimate business constraints.

4. Method Transfer to Production

• Co-Lead method transfer from R&D to the analytical production team, ensuring seamless implementation, effective analyst training, and consistent first-pass performance post-transfer.
• Produce training materials, worked examples, troubleshooting guides, and reference chromatograms that allow production analysts to execute methods without reengineering them.
• Remain available as technical escalation point during the first production runs, and iterate on the method if production-scale realities surface issues not evident at the R&D bench.

• Partner with Quality and Operations to ensure methods fit sustainably within production workflows, throughput expectations, and instrument scheduling.

5. Pipeline & Documentation Discipline

• Execute all method development and validation work through Cambium Analytica's internal method development pipeline software, maintaining accurate staging, task completion, and document versioning throughout each project.

Author and revise controlled documents — test methods (TM), validation protocols (VP), validation reports (VR), verification reports, training & competence documents and related SOPs — following Cambium Analytica's documentation framework.

• Maintain audit-ready records that would survive inspection by ISO 17025 accreditation bodies, NSF auditors, and client quality audits without substantive findings.

• Integrate proactively with the Quality team to embed compliance, data integrity, and risk mitigation into method design, rather than retrofitting them after the fact.

6. Experimental Oversight & Data Analysis

• Translate project objectives into detailed experimental plans with clear scope, milestones, and deliverables.
• Execute or oversee experimental work with strict adherence to protocols, quality standards, and timelines — and troubleshoot with scientific rigor when results diverge from expectations.
• Analyze, interpret, and synthesize complex analytical data into clear conclusions, written communications, and (where appropriate) internal or external thought leadership content.
• Monitor method performance and key quality metrics in production, identifying optimization opportunities and leading the corresponding method improvements.

• Evaluate method robustness under realistic production conditions — analyst variation, shift variation, reagent lot variation, instrument drift — and redesign where robustness is marginal.

Secondary Roles & Responsibilities

1. Technical Mentorship

• Provide technical and professional mentorship to technicians, associate scientists, and junior scientists within the RPD department.
• Create technical training materials and reference resources that accelerate skill-building across the team.

• Support coordination of supplemental testing to satisfy client, regulatory, or internal project requirements.

2. Equipment, Consumables & Supplier Management

• Monitor stock levels of reference standards, reagents, solvents, and consumables critical to ongoing method development.
• Submit and manage purchase requests, prioritizing items on the development critical path.
• Direct equipment modifications, maintenance strategies, and troubleshooting for instruments supporting R&D activity.

Maintain supplier relationships and escalate quality concerns proactively — particularly where reagent or standard variability threatens method reliability.

3. Cross-Functional Collaboration & Continuous Improvement

• Work closely within RPD and across departments — Analytical, Quality, Operations, and Sales — to align method development with business priorities.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of the method development pipeline itself, including process, tooling, and documentation standards.

• Perform additional duties as the role evolves or as directed by management.

• B.S. or M.S. in Analytical Chemistry, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, or a closely related discipline. A Ph.D. is acceptable but not required.
• Minimum of 5 years of hands-on analytical method development and validation experience in a regulated laboratory environment (contract lab, pharmaceutical, dietary supplement, or food testing).
• Demonstrated proficiency across multiple analytical platforms, including at minimum HPLC with UV/DAD detection and LC-MS (single quad or triple quad). Working familiarity with at least one of the following is expected: GC-FID/MS, ICP-MS, FTIR, Karl Fischer titration, or UV-Vis spectroscopy.
• Direct experience with compendial method verification and validation under USP, FCC, AOAC, or equivalent frameworks.
• Working knowledge of ISO/IEC 17025 requirements for method validation, verification, and scope of accreditation.
• Experience analyzing natural product matrices — dietary supplements, botanicals, functional foods, ingredients, or equivalent — and an understanding of the matrix specific challenges these present (complex backgrounds, interferences, variable reference material quality).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to author controlled documents (SOPs, TMs, VPs, VRs) that withstand external audit.

• Demonstrated ability to work independently and drive projects to completion under compressed timelines.

Preferred

• Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry or related discipline.
• Experience with modern analytical instrumentation, including high-sensitivity instruments with multiple detection strategies.
• Experience designing method approaches that scale across multiple analytes or matrices rather than one-method-per-analyte workflows.

With a legacy spanning more than 80 years, NSF leverages science and innovation to improve human and planet health. We provide science-driven, independent testing, inspection, certification, and advisory services and develop the very standards that drive the food, water, and life sciences industries worldwide. We empower our clients to navigate shifting regulations to improve consumer health, safety, and quality of life.

One of our core values is We Are One NSF. This means that while we’re one team, we embrace the cultural, ethnic, language, and demographic diversity that reflects the societies in which we live and work.

Come join a team that makes a difference in the world. More information about NSF can be found at nsf.org.

NSF is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, among other things, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, status as a protected veteran, or disability.

Notice to Agency and Search Firm Representatives: Please note that NSF is not accepting unsolicited resumes from agencies/search firms for this role. Resumes submitted to an NSF employee by a third-party agency without a valid written & signed search agreement between NSF and said third-party agency will become the sole property of NSF. No fee will be paid if a candidate is hired as a result of an unsolicited agency or search firm referral. Thank you.