Senior Optical Assistant / Optical Lab Technician
£30,000 per year
Full time, permanent
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
No weekends or Bank Holidays
Potential to fast track into a management position
Love optics, but ready for something different?
Reglaze Glasses Direct is looking for an experienced optical professional to join our friendly, close knit team.
We're an established and growing online optical business specialising in reglazing customers' own spectacle frames. We've been doing this for over 15 years and have built a very busy operation around providing quality lenses, accurate glazing and genuinely good customer service.
We're now looking for someone who can become an important part of the next stage of the business.
For the right person, there is genuine potential to fast track into a management position, taking increasing responsibility for the day to day operation as they learn the business and demonstrate their ability.
This isn't your typical high street optical job
No sales targets. No pressure selling. No upselling. No weekends. No Bank Holidays. No late nights.
Instead, you'll use your optical experience across the business, combining dispensing knowledge, practical laboratory work, customer service and the clerical side of processing orders.
If you enjoy optics but you're tired of the retail side of the industry, this could be a refreshing change.
We're busy. Really busy.
This isn't a quiet job.
We process a high volume of customer orders and there's always plenty happening. We work hard, we work efficiently and accuracy matters.
Our customers send their own spectacle frames to us from across the country. We send them prepaid packaging, receive and process their frames, check their prescriptions and requirements, manufacture and glaze their lenses, quality check the finished spectacles and carefully package everything for the journey home.
That means the role is genuinely varied.
One minute you might be checking a prescription, the next working in the lab, answering an optical query, processing customer orders or preparing completed glasses for dispatch.
We're looking for someone who enjoys being busy, takes pride in their work and is happy to get stuck in wherever they're needed.
What you'll be doing
1. Optical and dispensing
Good optical and dispensing knowledge is essential.
You'll be involved with:
- Checking prescriptions, lens specifications and customer orders
- Identifying potential prescription or dispensing issues
- Advising on lens suitability and optical requirements
- Understanding different lens designs and materials
- Dealing with optical queries from customers by telephone or online
- Making sure orders are correct before progressing through production
2. Laboratory
You'll also be involved in the practical side of spectacle production:
- Glazing and finishing spectacles
- Working with a wide variety of frames, prescriptions and lens types
- Inspecting and verifying completed spectacles
- Quality checking finished work
- Looking after laboratory machinery and equipment
- Helping organise laboratory workflow
- Maintaining a clean, organised and efficient lab
We currently use Huvitz equipment in our busy optical laboratory.
3. Orders, administration and dispatch
There's also a significant clerical side to the position.
Because our service operates remotely, every order involves packaging, postage, paperwork and accurate administration.
You'll help with:
- Preparing prepaid postal packs for customers
- Processing incoming frames and orders
- Checking customer and order details
- Preparing paperwork, postage and labels
- Updating customer and order information on our systems
- Packaging frames and completed spectacles carefully
- Preparing completed orders for dispatch
- Keeping orders organised as they move through production
Accuracy here is every bit as important as accuracy in the lab.
Looking for your next step?
This is where the role could become particularly interesting.
We're not simply looking for another pair of hands.
We'd love to find someone who, once they understand the business, can start taking ownership and helping us manage the day to day operation.
For the right person, there is genuine potential to fast track into a management position.
We're looking for somebody who can learn how the whole operation fits together, earn the trust of the team and gradually take on more responsibility.
That could include:
- Coordinating the daily workload
- Prioritising jobs and keeping work flowing
- Helping manage the lab and order process
- Maintaining our quality and service standards
- Supporting other members of the team
- Solving day to day operational problems
- Identifying ways we can work more efficiently
- Taking greater responsibility as the business continues to grow
We're not looking for someone who simply wants the title of Manager.
We're looking for someone who can lead by example, get involved and become a person the team and the business can genuinely rely on.
If that's you, we'd like to give you the opportunity to progress quickly.
Who are we looking for?
You might currently be an experienced Optical Assistant, Dispensing Optician, Optical Lab Technician or Lab Supervisor.
Your current job title isn't particularly important.
What matters is that you have:
- Strong optical and dispensing knowledge
- A good understanding of spectacle prescriptions and lenses
- Practical optical lab or glazing experience
- Good computer and administrative skills
- Excellent attention to detail
- Good organisational skills
- Confidence dealing with customers by telephone
- A practical, hands on approach
- The ability to work efficiently in a busy environment
- The confidence to take responsibility
- A willingness to help with every part of the operation
Previous supervisory or management experience would be an advantage, but isn't essential.
Potential matters to us too.
What's it actually like working here?
We think we've created a genuinely nice place to work.
We're based in a lovely rural location with easy access and free on site parking. Our workplace is clean, organised, comfortable and air conditioned.
We're a small, friendly team and we're busy.
We expect everyone to work hard and play their part, but there's a big difference between being busy and being under unnecessary pressure.
There are no individual sales targets, no pressure selling and no expectation to upsell customers.
You can concentrate on doing a good job.
And the working week is refreshingly straightforward:
Monday to Friday.
9am to 5pm.
No weekends.
No Bank Holidays.
No late nights.
When 5pm comes, you're finished for the day.
What we offer
- £30,000 starting salary
- Potential to fast track into a management position
- Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
- No weekends or Bank Holidays
- No late nights
- No sales targets
- No pressure selling or upselling
- Comfortable, air conditioned workplace
- Free on site parking
- Easy access
- Attractive rural location
- Casual dress
- Employee discount
- Friendly, close knit team
- A busy and genuinely varied role
- The opportunity to have a real influence as the business grows
Interested?
Perhaps you enjoy optics but you've had enough of Saturdays, late finishes and sales targets.
Perhaps you're ready for more responsibility but haven't been given the opportunity where you currently work.
Or perhaps you're already the person everyone relies on and you're ready to turn that into the next stage of your career.
If you have strong optical knowledge, practical ability, good organisational skills and the ambition to progress, we'd really like to hear from you.
This could start as your next optical job and develop quite quickly into something much more.
Salary: £30,000 per year
Job type: Full time, permanent
Hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
Work location: In person
Pay: £30,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Free parking
- On-site parking
Work Location: In person
