Cnuic Technologies is a deep-tech company based in Edinburgh. We are building next-generation optical systems aimed at pushing the limits of precision manufacturing and nanoscale engineering. We are backed by substantial venture capital and have received grant support from several UK innovation agencies.
We are a small, focused team working on genuinely difficult hardware problems. The work is fast-paced and collaborative, and we give engineers the space and resources to do serious technical work. If you want to build something from the ground up and care deeply about getting the physics right, this is a good place to be.
About the Role
This is a senior project management role sitting at the centre of the business. You will be responsible for keeping our R&D programme on track, our grant obligations met, and our external relationships with foundry and commercial partners well managed. You will work closely with the technical leads, report directly to leadership, and act as the operational backbone of the company as we scale.
The role is genuinely cross-functional. On any given week you might be updating a project plan with the engineering team, preparing a progress report for a monitoring officer, coordinating a design review with a photonic foundry partner, or helping to draft a new grant application. You need to be comfortable moving between detailed technical conversations and higher-level commercial ones, and to maintain coherence across all of them.
This is not a purely administrative position. We are a hardware company with a complex, multi-strand R&D roadmap, active grant obligations, and an expanding set of external partners. The person in this role needs enough technical grounding to understand what our engineers are working on, anticipate where dependencies and risks will arise, and translate that into clear plans and communications for different audiences.
About You
General
- You are organised and proactive, and you take ownership of keeping things moving without needing to be chased.
- You communicate clearly in writing and in person, and you can adapt your tone depending on whether you are speaking with a semiconductor engineer, a grants monitoring officer, or a commercial integrator.
- You are comfortable with ambiguity and with the reality that plans in a hardware startup will need to be revised regularly as experimental data comes in.
- You bring structure without creating unnecessary process overhead. You know the difference between governance that helps and governance that slows people down.
Project Management
- A formal project management qualification is required, ideally PRINCE2 Practitioner. Agile or hybrid methodology experience (for example, APM or Scrum) alongside a structured framework is a practical advantage in a fast-moving R&D environment.
- Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-workpackage projects with defined milestones and deliverables, including managing dependencies across teams and external partners.
- Solid understanding of risk management, change control, and how to maintain a realistic project plan when technical progress does not follow the original schedule.
- Experience producing clear, well-structured project documentation: plans, risk registers, RAID logs, status reports, and stage-end reviews.
Grant Funding and Public Sector Reporting
- Direct experience managing or supporting delivery of UK government-funded R&D projects.
- Familiarity with grant management platforms, grant offer letter obligations, quarterly monitoring officer meetings, and the financial reporting and claims process.
- Understanding of how to structure work packages, milestones, and deliverables in a way that satisfies grant compliance requirements while remaining practically useful to the engineering team.
- Experience contributing to grant applications, including writing project management and delivery sections, is a meaningful advantage.
VC-Funded Environment
- Experience working inside a VC-backed startup or scale-up, with an appreciation of how investor expectations, funding runway, and internal resourcing interact with technical planning.
- Comfortable contributing to investor reporting and board-level updates, and able to present programme status clearly to a non-technical leadership audience.
- An understanding of how to balance the governance discipline expected by grant funders with the speed and flexibility that a startup environment demands.
External Partners and Foundries
- Experience managing relationships with external technical partners, including photonic or CMOS foundries, research institutes, or contract engineering organisations.
- Understanding of how tape-out schedules, process design kits (PDKs), and foundry design rules affect project planning timelines, even if you are not designing the devices yourself.
- Familiarity with the practicalities of managing collaborative grant projects involving consortium partners, including sub-contracts, collaboration agreements, and cost-sharing arrangements.
- Experience coordinating with commercial partners or system integrators, managing expectations, tracking deliverables, and ensuring that partner-facing communications remain timely and professional.
Benefits & Compensation
We offer a competitive salary appropriate to a principal-level role. In addition:
- Equity: A meaningful allocation from our option pool, reflecting the foundational nature of this hire.
- Life insurance: Standard comprehensive coverage.
- Office: A well-equipped, modern workspace in West Edinburgh, designed for both focused individual work and team collaboration, with dedicated areas to step away and recharge.
