Science Writer

Science Writer – Marketing Communications

B2B Scientific Marketing Agency

Type: Full time

Location: Negotiable. Remote or hybrid (office in Portsmouth), depending on location of candidate. Candidates will be required to visit the office at least once a quarter for full team meetings.

Salary: From £28,000-£32,000 (PhD level), dependent on experience

Benefits: Benefits include: workplace pension; 25.5 days holiday; 1 day paid Charity Day; work from home flexibility; easy working environment; generous bonus scheme after qualification period. 

Keywords: Science Writer; Life Science; Molecular Biology; Genomics; PR; Marketing Agency; Technical Writing; Science Communications; PhD

Start date: ASAP

TO APPLY: Read the job description and then send your CV, a covering email explaining why you’re right for the role, and if possible, some examples of similar writing projects to: Show email 

Now in our 23rd year, Alto is a well-established and respected life science and healthcare B2B marketing communications agency. Our client base of UK and international companies ranges from global corporations to start-ups, and many have been working with us for a long time. That’s because we’re good at what we do, we’re enthusiastic, have in-depth scientific knowledge, great writing and marketing skills, and provide an excellent client service.

The role:

We are looking for a PhD-qualified life scientist who enjoys writing, learning about cutting-edge products, technologies and applications, and communicating with clients, interviewing customers etc. If you’re a recent life science PhD graduate, or an experienced science writer looking for a new challenge, and you’re interested in joining our friendly team, we’d love to hear from you.

Working with the Account Managers, you will work on varied writing projects such as blog articles, white papers, trade media articles, press releases, social media posts, emails, website copy, case studies, video scripts etc. These involve a wide variety of writing styles and include promotional and/or informational content. You’ll need to:

• Consider the people that you’re writing for – what they need from the products and services they use in their work and what will interest them

• Translate product features into user benefits and always ask yourself the “so what?” question; ie how does a product feature help a scientist in their day-to-day work?

• Be creative. Sometimes you’ll need to “re-purpose” a story many times

• Adapt writing tone to match content format and/or company voice/style guidelines

Because our clients’ products/services cover a range of scientific areas, and this can change as we get new clients on board, you must have an interest in all the sciences and be able to quickly understand the benefits of complex technical products and applications in eg:

• Genomics, molecular biology/molecular diagnostics
• Drug discovery and development
• General life science/biotech/clinical laboratory research 
• Cell and gene therapies, biopharma

Qualifications:

• Science PhD (for example, molecular biology/biochemistry/cell biology) with good, practical lab experience of a number of life science tools and techniques

Personal attributes:

• Excellent English grammar and scientific marketing writing ability/potential
• Must be interested in different branches of science and technology and be able to apply scientific understanding to a range of complex (life) science topics, using research skills to get up to speed with unfamiliar areas
• Outstanding attention to detail (spotting typos etc)
• A flexible working approach and ‘can-do’ personality
• The ability to prioritise and deliver multiple projects
• Self motivated and reliable with an enthusiastic, proactive approach
• Ability to work well with others in teams
• Awareness of search engine optimization (SEO) would be advantageous
• Demonstrated ability to work with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SEO software