PhD Graduate: Fluids and Thermal Engineering

Cooper & Hall Limited; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 35,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking engineering consultancy as a Fluids and Thermal Engineer. You’ll engage in diverse projects, utilising your PhD expertise to solve complex engineering challenges. Enjoy a supportive team environment, competitive salary, and excellent benefits including enhanced parental leave and professional development.

Benefits

Competitive salary with yearly reviews

25 days holiday plus opportunity to buy more

Enhanced parental benefits

Company pension scheme

Private healthcare membership

Cycle to work scheme

Season rail ticket loan

Qualifications

• Solid understanding of practical thermofluid mechanics.
• Experience in CFD tools like Fluent or openFOAM.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Analyse fluid flow and heat transfer performance.
• Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team on system design.
• Develop relationships with clients to tailor solutions.

Skills

Computational Fluid Dynamics

Thermofluid mechanics

Communication skills

Education

PhD/DPhil/EngD in Engineering

Job description

Frazer-Nash is a values-driven and forward-thinking engineering, systems and technology consultancy. We help organisations deliver innovative engineering and technology solutions to make lives safe, secure, sustainable and affordable, and we specialise in using advanced digital engineering as part of these solutions to help our clients address high-value technical challenges.

PostDoc or Industry?

Finishing a doctorate is a big deal. Pursuing a path into academia through a PostDoc position is explored by some, but many look to apply their newly acquired skills in an industrial context and gain some commercial acumen in parallel. If you are looking for this opportunity, then Frazer-Nash could be the answer for you!

Valuing Your Doctorate

As a high-tech engineering consultancy, Frazer-Nash values the additional skills and experience that doctorate graduates bring to our business. For us the value you bring comes through a combination of specialist knowledge, a robust understanding of engineering fundamentals from undergraduate teaching, experience of presenting at conferences, and ability to engage with a range of stakeholders to solve complex problems. Within our Fluids, Physics and Systems Performance area, over 25% of your potential colleagues and line managers have completed PhDs, DPhils or EngD themselves, and are therefore readily equipped to help you make the most of your experience and skills and help you tailor your career development.

Adaptable Approach to Starting Work

We also recognise that finishing your doctorate is a challenging time, often bringing challenges with funding, writing up and thinking about what next. Hence, should you wish to commence work before your thesis is fully complete, we are happy to discuss adaptable ways of working to help you maintaining a healthy work-life balance. This gives you the comfort of commencing a new career, financial stability and importantly the bandwidth to enable you to finish your write up.

What do we look for in a Fluids and Thermal Engineer?

We are looking for people with a solid technical skillset and good communication skills, who are keen to find practical solutions to our client’s engineering challenges in different contexts, such as:

• Analysing and understanding fluid flow and heat transfer performance in different contexts, such as predicting detailed aspects of fluid flow and heat transfer (e.g. using hand calculations or Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD) or understanding system flow performance,
• Working effectively as part of a multi-disciplinary team to design new systems or understand challenges with existing plant, reducing risks and supporting successful project delivery,
• Developing relationships with new and existing clients, understanding issues, tailoring our skills to develop solutions and helping them to operate safety and protect the environment.

What will working as a Fluids and Thermal Engineer be like?

We empower and support our engineers to deliver a wide range of projects throughout their careers, including:

• Variety: Typically, our people participate in several projects simultaneously, and so you can expect to enhance your skills through a diverse range of interesting and engaging work. Our projects are wide-ranging and can last from a few weeks to many years of sustained support.
• Teamwork: Working as part of a supportive group, you'll be proactive in developing your skills, reaching out to colleagues for advice and support when needed, and freely sharing your experience with colleagues to support their development.
• Developing capability: We are always looking to strengthen and diversify our capabilities and you will have opportunities to have an impact on our future skills and services.
• Professional recognition: We value chartered engineer and fellow status, and we mentor and support our employees to achieve this.
• Taking the lead: As you develop, we’ll support you to manage all aspects of technical projects, including client communication, project delivery and other staff involved in the project.
• Winning work: As you develop, we’ll support you to develop new business by responding to enquiries and writing bids, and representing Frazer-Nash at client meetings, conferences and seminars.

Requirements

The successful applicant will meet the following minimum requirements:

• You’ll enjoy using your solid understanding of practical thermofluid mechanics and specialist knowledge gained from a post-graduate degree/PhD/DPhil/EngD in Engineering, or a similar level of training.
• You’ll have some experience of using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to understand complex flow fields and heat transfer (for example Fluent, CFX, Star-CCM, openFOAM etc).
• You’ll be able to use your communication skills to engage effectively with stakeholders internally and externally, both verbally (for example in presentations to conferences or industrial sponsors) and through crisp and focused academic writing (for example in papers).
• You’ll have some experience of working with stakeholders/supervisors to plan work and agree time estimates.

The following would also be of interest, but are not essential:

• Experience of using practical experimental work, in conjunction with modelling approaches, to understand fluid flow and heat transfer.
• Experience of supporting design work (for example test rigs or equipment).

Due to the nature of the work that Frazer-Nash Consultancy undertake, candidates will be required to undergo pre-employment screening and must be able to satisfy clearance criteria for UK National Security Vetting.

Benefits

We provide our people with an excellent benefit and offering package that comprises:

• Competitive salary with yearly reviews
• 25 days holiday + the opportunity to buy 5 days.
• A company that has its heart in the right place and a welcoming work culture.
• Happy to talk adaptable working
• Enhanced parental benefits
• Company pension scheme
• Targeted professional development
• Life assurance
• Private healthcare membership
• Bonus scheme linked into company performance
• Paid membership fees to a professional institution
• Support in attaining professional membership
• Cycle to work scheme
• Season rail ticket loan
• And further optional benefits you can tailor to your personal requirements