Soil Chemistry / ICP Instrumentation Consultant

Troubleshooting

Troubleshoot ICP-OES and/or ICP-MS instrumentation used for high-throughput soil chemistry analysis.

Quality Assurance and Quality Control

• Review analytical data for quality assurance and quality control, including instrument drift, contamination, calibration performance, failed controls, rerun criteria, and overall data integrity.
• Document instrument issues, maintenance activities, QC findings, corrective actions, and quality findings.

Workflow Improvement

• Improve standard operating procedures (SOPs), laboratory workflows, quality control processes, and operator consistency.
• Recommend practical improvements that increase instrument reliability, laboratory throughput, and analytical data quality.

Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with Soil Science and Data teams to ensure accurate, timely, and reliable soil chemistry results.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Soil Science, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Agronomy, or a related scientific discipline.
• Hands-on experience with ICP-OES and/or ICP-MS operation.
• Experience troubleshooting instrumentation, analytical methods, sample preparation, and laboratory data quality issues.
• Experience with soil, agricultural, environmental, plant, water, or comparable sample matrices.
• Strong understanding of analytical quality assurance and quality control practices.
• Strong technical documentation and written/verbal communication skills.
• High-throughput production lab experience.
• Soil nutrient or elemental analysis experience.
• Experience with LIMS, instrument data systems, SQL, Python, R, or structured data review.