Welcome to Next Phase Recruitment! Please see below our current jobs that match your search criteria. For a broader job search please visit the home page or call us on 01403 216216 to discuss career options in other areas of Life Science and Technology.

Welcome to Next Phase Recruitment! Please use the above link to see our current jobs that match your search criteria. For a broader job search please visit the home page or call us on 01403 216216 to discuss career options in other areas of Life Science and Technology.

Quality Assurance Officer

Quality Assurance (QA) is a vital function within all Pharmaceutical and Medical Device companies.  Job titles within the QA area can vary a great deal across different companies, with titles including QA Associate, QA Officer, QA Specialist, QA Officer and QA Scientist, then progressing to QA Manager, QA Lead etc. The QA terms, especially at junior-to-intermediate level, are often quite interchangeable.

The QA team is typically responsible for ensuring that the quality standards and systems followed in the manufacture of drugs is in compliance with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and meets the specific quality standards laid out in the company’s Quality Management System (QMS). A QMS will include quality standards for internal audits, deviations, change controls, corrective actions, quality review reports, clean room monitoring, batch record review, and external documentation reviews.   

A pharmaceutical QA professional’s responsibilities will include analysing the production process of pharmaceuticals, identifying areas where errors prevail, root cause analysis, observing every activity,  monitoring the drugs being manufactured or packed for visible defects, testing the drugs (or at least interpreting the data from lab-based QC analysis), noting down observations gathered from the quality control process, and accepting or rejecting batches of drugs on the basis of samples (Batch Release). Quality Assurance teams will often be divided into different QA groups, with some more focused on batch record review while others are more involved in non-conformance investigations and SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) updates.

Skills and Experience required to become a Quality Assurance Officer

  • Science degree (this is not always essential)
  • Experience gained in a GMP / ISO environment
  • QA processes and systems
  • Diplomacy
  • Batch record processing
  • Ability to multi-task

Salary Levels

Quality Assurance salaries can vary enormously depending on what specific QA duties the person will be undertaking. If the QA role is a relatively entry-level or administrative one, focused on batch review or entry and processing of Quality Assurance documents / data, salaries could be in the £18k - £24k range. Salaries can then increase steadily once you start to specialise in a particular area, especially if this means getting involved in hosting / conducting internal or external audits, continuous improvement initiatives, team leadership, or training. Quality Assurance offers a varied and interesting career path and you could earn up to £40k in a non-management role and significantly more than this once you are in a management-level position.

 

 

 

 

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in South East England, to the north west of London.  Major towns and cities in Oxfordshire include Oxford, Banbury, Bicester, Witney, Thame, Abingdon, Wantage, Didcot, Harwell, Wallingford and Henley-on-Thames.  Oxfordshire has the largest concentration of research and development activity in Western Europe.  Harwell Oxford Campus, part of Science Vale Oxford UK, is being developed as a world-class centre for science, innovation and enterprise.   Milton Park is of the UK’s foremost science communities, housing companies ranging from start-ups to global organisations with particular strengths in the biotechnology and ICT sectors.  Education and tourism are major employers in Oxfordshire.  Tourist attractions in Oxfordshire include the stunning city of Oxford, Blenheim Palace, Henley-on-Thames, Bicester Shopping village and numerous attractive towns dotted along the river Thames.

Famous people born in Oxfordshire:  Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister and Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist.

The Oxforedshire Life Sciences and Healthcare ckuster spans a whole range of life sciences enterprise including drug discovery and development, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, regenerative medicine, precision medicine and genomics. With world-leading research and teaching providing the ideas and talent to develop ground-breaking new technologies, we also operate as a global powerhouse for clinical trials.

Oxfordshire is a major site for biotechnology, rare disease, ATMP, cell therapy, gene therapy and pharmaceutical development. It houses a number of university spin-out businesses, start-up biotechs and other organisations attracting seed investment. If you are looking for career opportunities in life sciences within the Oxford, call the Next Phase Recruitment team on 01403 216216.