In her final year at the University of Glasgow, Hitchins began to work with Frederick Soddy. When he moved to the University of Aberdeen as the Chair of Chemistry in 1914, Hitchins and another assistant, John A. Cranston, accompanied him. At Aberdeen, Hitchins was a Carnegie Research Scholar, receiving a one-year appointment and monetary award given to a graduate of a Scottish institution for research and study by American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Expectations that Soddy would establish a thriving research center at Aberdeen were disrupted by World War I, as male students became soldiers, and women students were encouraged to graduate from accelerated courses so as to fill positions in industry and government.  Hitchins was drafted to work in the Admiralty Steel Analysis Laboratories in 1916. After the war, women workers were displaced from their jobs by returning soldiers. Hitchins, released from the Admiralty, was able to find work at a Sheffield steel works.
In 1921, Frederick Soddy, then at the University of Oxford, obtained funding to rehire Hitchins as a technical assistant. He had recently received the Nobel prize for his work on radioactivity and isotopes. In 1922, Hitchins became his private research assistant. She continued to work with him until 1927, when she emigrated to Kenya to be nearer to her family.