MCAD / Design engineer

Timebeat; Greater London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Prototype budget

Own product from sketch to production

Direct access to founders

Competitive salary

Job summary

Timebeat seeks a Mechanical Engineer to own enclosure and chassis design for rack-mounted hardware, portable units, and PCIe card assemblies. You will drive from sketch to production part, collaborating with electronics to ensure board and enclosure fit seamlessly.

You will produce complete manufacturing packs and manage BOMs, tolerances, finishes, and revisions, while optimizing for cost and manufacturability in low-to-mid volume runs.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to design enclosures and assemblies for rack-mounted hardware.
• Experience with tolerancing, datums, fits and surface finishes.

Responsibilities

• Design enclosures and chassis for rack mounted appliances, portable units and PCIe card assemblies.
• Produce the full manufacturing pack: 3D models, 2D drawings, tolerances, finishes, fasteners, brackets, panels, cutouts, labelling and revision control.
• Own sheet metal and machined part design for low to medium volume production, and understand cost implications.
• Own thermal design: airflow, heatsinking, fan selection, and balance cooling with acoustic noise in a rack.
• Collaborate with electronics engineers to align board outline with enclosure design during layout reviews.
• Own the mechanical BOM and coordinate with manufacturers on DFM, first article inspection and fixtures.

Skills

3D MCAD

Sheet metal design

Machined parts

Tolerancing

Thermal reasoning

PCB layout reading

EMC aware

Hardware packaging

Education

Mechanical engineering degree

Tools

SolidWorks

Job description

You will own the physical product. Enclosures, chassis, brackets, panels, thermal design, mounting, and every drawing that goes to a contract manufacturer.

Junior to mid level, senior level scope, because we are a small team. In your first year you will take a product enclosure from a sketch to a manufactured part in a customer's rack, and you will be the person whose name is on the drawing pack.

ABOUT TIMEBEAT

We build precision time synchronisation hardware: PCIe cards, rack appliances and portable units that give stock exchanges, telecoms operators, broadcasters, defence primes and government programmes a clock they can prove is correct. Our hardware is open, and so is our mechanical design.

WHY THIS ROLE IS WORTH HAVING

Thermal design is product performance.

In a lot of companies the mechanical engineer is handed a finished board and told to put a box around it. Not here, and for a specific technical reason. Our accuracy comes from oscillators, and an oscillator is a device whose entire job is to not move. The thing most likely to move it is a change in temperature. Airflow, thermal mass, where the hot silicon sits relative to the oscillator, how the enclosure behaves when a rack neighbour spins its fans up. Those are your decisions, and they show up directly in how well the product holds time. Mechanical design here is part of the specification.

You will see it built.

Small company, real budget for prototypes, contract manufacturers we talk to directly, no queue for someone else's model shop. You will hold the part you drew, find what is wrong with it, and issue the next revision inside weeks rather than quarters.

Your work is published.

Our designs are open. Engineers across the Open Compute Project community read them. That is a portfolio no proprietary role can give you.

We are hiring for trajectory.

You do not need to have done all of this before. You need to have done some of it properly, and to be the sort of person who reads the manufacturing standard rather than guessing. Whoever owns mechanical design now leads it as the team grows.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Design enclosures and chassis for rack mounted appliances, portable units and PCIe card assemblies.
• Produce the full manufacturing pack: 3D models, 2D drawings, tolerances, finishes, fasteners, brackets, panels, cutouts, labelling and revision control.
• Own sheet metal and machined part design for low to medium volume production, and understand what your chosen process actually costs.
• Own thermal design: airflow paths, heatsinking, fan and vent selection, thermal isolation of oscillators, and the trade between cooling and acoustic noise in a customer's rack.
• Sit with the electronics engineers so the board outline and the enclosure are designed together rather than thrown over a wall. You will be in layout reviews arguing about connector positions, and that is the point.
• Own the mechanical BOM and the suppliers behind it, and work with our manufacturers on DFM feedback, first article inspection and fixtures.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• A mechanical engineering degree or equivalent demonstrated experience, plus one to five years of design work. We are open on the exact number.
• Genuine competence in a 3D MCAD package. SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Onshape, Inventor or Creo. If you learned on one, you can learn ours.
• Sheet metal and machined part design, and how the process constrains the geometry.
• A drawing another person can manufacture from without ringing you up. Tolerancing, datums, fits, surface finish.
• Basic thermal reasoning: conduction, convection, where the heat goes and why. And hands on: you would rather build a test piece than argue about a model for a week.
• Able to work in our London office. This is hardware, so bench time is not optional.
• Electronics enclosure design, and comfort reading a PCB layout.
• Thermal or structural simulation, at any level of sophistication.
• Rack mounted equipment, data centre or telecoms hardware.
• EMC aware mechanical design: shielding, gasketing, bonding and aperture control.
• Environmental qualification: shock, vibration, thermal cycling, IP ratings.
• Rendering, technical illustration, or PDM and PLM discipline. An interest in precision timing, oscillators or GNSS. Eligibility for UK security clearance.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Competitive salary depending on experience.
• Prototype and print budget, and a bench of your own.
• Ownership of the physical product from sketch to production part.
• Direct access to the founders and a genuine say in what we build.