Job summary
- Main area
- Medicines Manufacturing Centre
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 6
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Compressed hours
- Job ref
- 319-7195027JN
- Employer
- Northumbria Healthcare - NHCT Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Northumbria Innovation and Manufacturing Hub
- Town
- Seaton Delaval
- Salary
- £37,338 - £44,962 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 24/06/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Quality Control Scientist - Senior Physical Tester
NHS AfC: Band 6
Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work for an organisation that was voted the best acute and combined acute and community trust in the country, based on the experience of its staff (NHS Staff Survey 2022). Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare and, this is…the Northumbria Way!
What the Northumbria Way means for you:
- Extensive staff health and well-being programme including access to our specialist Wellbeing Hub
- Support and connection through a variety of Staff Network groups
- A range of flexible working opportunities
- Generous annual leave and pension scheme
- Access to lease car and home electronics scheme (qualifying criteria applies)
- Opportunities to improve your professional development through our vast training programmes
- On-site nursery places via salary sacrifice
- Access to savings scheme via salary sacrifice with Northumberland Community Bank
We are proud to be one of the country’s top performing NHS trusts – rated ‘outstanding’ overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We provide a range of health and care services to support more than 500,000 people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside across the largest geographical area of any NHS Trust in England. Our teams deliver care from hospitals, a range of community venues and people’s homes. Our hospitals include a specialist emergency care hospital (the first of its kind in England), three general hospitals and community hospitals. In the community we deliver a wide range of community and public health services.
We lead in innovation and quality, having opened the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently launched our Community Promise – a pledge to make a real impact not just in healthcare but on the wider factors that affect people’s lives, such as education, employment and the economy.
If Northumbria Healthcare sounds like somewhere you could belong we would love to hear from you. Visit our website to catch up on our latest news.
Whilst Northumbria Healthcare are a highly innovative organisation, the use of Third Party Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a risk to the integrity of our Recruitment & Selection processes. If you use AI, and it poses a risk to the integrity your individual recruitment process, we may withdraw your application at any stage of the process.
Job overview
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a proactive and passionate QC Senior Physical Tester to join the Medicines Manufacturing Centre (MMC)—a cutting-edge NHS pharmaceutical production facility based in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland. The MMC is in its final design stages, with facility construction planned through to September 2025. This is a fantastic opportunity to be part of a pioneering NHS manufacturing facility, supporting a leadership team committed to quality, innovation, and patient care. Please note we reserve the right to close this vacancy prior to the closing date once the required number of suitable applications have been received.
All employees of the Medicine Manufacturing Centre (MMC) are currently employed by Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, under Agenda for Change Terms and Conditions. Should the service be transferred into alternative ownership, those employees with start dates prior to the transfer date, will be protected under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE). Therefore, employees will transfer to the new employer on the same terms and conditions, which are protected and the employees’ continuity of employment is preserved
Main duties of the job
The postholder will be responsible for leading environmental monitoring activities across cleanroom and controlled environments, ensuring compliance with GMP and ISO standards. The role includes managing testing programmes, maintaining environmental monitoring equipment, producing documentation, and leading a small team of testers. The individual will also contribute to core pharmaceutical quality systems, demonstrate inclusive leadership, and act as a technical expert in cleanroom environmental testing.
Working for our organisation
We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, covering one of the largest geographical areas of any NHS trust in the country. Leading in innovation and quality – opening a state of the art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare, this is the Northumbria Way! Please read ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
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Manage environmental monitoring equipment, including validation, calibration, planned preventative maintenance (PPM), and service contracts.
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Conduct physical and microbiological environmental testing within cleanroom facilities and associated outer areas, following a defined schedule.
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Perform environmental testing and qualification of clean air devices, including isolators.
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Produce and maintain documentation such as Quality Control (QC) worksheets and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), ensuring compliance with data integrity standards.
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Support core Pharmaceutical Quality Systems (PQS) by contributing to deviation management, change control impact assessments, and Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) relevant to environmental monitoring.
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Operate and interpret data from the Building Management System as applicable.
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Act as the technical adviser on physical testing, with specific expertise in ISO and GMP standards for clean air classification.
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Perform additional testing where required, such as compressed air and nitrogen gas testing.
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Conduct temperature mapping of all temperature-controlled areas (e.g. fridges, freezers, cold rooms, stability chambers, incubators, and storage spaces) in accordance with EU GMP guidelines.
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Manage the team of physical testers, ensuring training, development, and adequate contingency or capacity planning aligned with departmental needs.
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Role model compassionate and inclusive leadership, fostering a collective leadership culture that:
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Engages, enables, and empowers others.
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Uses coaching techniques to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement.
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Encourages collaboration and teamwork within and across organisational boundaries.
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Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Degree in relevant scientific discipline e.g. engineering, chemistry or equivalent experience Or • Level 3 or BTEC qualification preferably in Pharmaceutical Manufacture discipline or relative experience.
- Eligible to register with a relevant professional body e.g. General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) or Royal Society of Biology (RSB), or Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), or engineering registration or medical gas registration.
Desirable criteria
- Qualified environmental tester
- Qualified Medical Gas Tester
- Professional Registration
knowledge and experience
Essential criteria
- Knowledge of GMP environmental testing requirement
Desirable criteria
- Experience of working in cleanroom environments
- Experience of environmental testing in accordance with GMP and relevant ISO standards e.g. ISO14644 and EU GMP Annex 1.
- Experience of gas testing as per European Pharmacopoeia and HTM 02 01 and any other relevant medical gas legislation.
- Experience in using GMP Pharmaceutical Quality Systems e.g. SOP, worksheets, Reports, Permit-to-Works, Deviations, CAPA
- Experience in line management / team management
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Carly McGurty
- Job title
- Deputy Head of Quality
- Email address
- [email protected]
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