Oliver Raether studied automation, measurement, control and feedback control engineering, optical- and environmental measurement and obtained in 1995 his Master of Science Degree from the Hamburg University of Technology in Germany.

In the same year Oliver Raether took up a position at Bruker Daltonik in Bremen Germany developing mobile gas chromatography and portable quadrupole mass spectrometers. Since 2000 Oliver initiated the development of orthogonal time of flight mass spectrometers as project manager and later from 2003 as research and development manager for orthogonal time of flight mass spectrometer. The Bruker micrOTOF, micrOTOF-Q (1st commercial TOF making use of an ion funnel), maXis, impact and compact products have been developed in his department.

Since 2010 Oliver Raether leads the development of the timsTOF product series.

Oliver Raether has co-authored 14 peer reviewed publications and is inventor/co-inventor of 20 patent families with 71 patents in the field of mass spectrometry (h-index 13).