Steve holds a personal Chair at the University of Liverpool (UoL), before working in UK industry for over 16 years including Cookson (Oxford), Courtaulds (Coventry) and Unilever (Port Sunlight Laboratories). He has cofounded two Unilever Ventures funded spin-out companies: IOTA NanoSolutions Limited and Hydra Polymers Limited; and is currently Chief Technology Officer of Tandem Nano Ltd (UoL spinout) and Chief Scientific Advisor for Polymer Mimetic Ltd (joint-venture with Scott Bader exploiting new polymer syntheses developed in the Rannard group at UoL).

Steve is Director of the UoL Centre for Long-acting Therapeutics (2020-date), Director of the UoL Radiomaterials Laboratory (2013-date), and is a cofounder and vice-Chair of the British Society for Nanomedicine (2010-date). He held a Royal Society Industry Fellowship (2005-2009) and an IOTA NanoSolutions Senior Research Fellowship (2007-2010), was a founding committee member of the Recent Appointees in Polymer Science Group, held two RSC Industrial Lecturerships (Strathclyde University 2001; University of Sussex 2002), was visiting Lecturer at University of Sussex (1999-2001), and visiting Professor at UoL (2003-2007).

He was the first recipient of the joint RSC/Macro Group UK Young Researcher of the Year Medal (1998) for his branched polymer and dendrimer research and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. His current patient-focussed research aims to utilise particle technologies in the development of long-acting therapeutics.