Principal Mechanical Engineer

Babcock Mission Critical Services España SA.; Plymouth; Hybrid; GBP 57,000 - 72,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension match

Digital GP

Paid leave benefits

Job summary

Babcock is seeking a Principal Mechanical Engineer at Devonport Royal Dockyard to lead mechanical engineering for major infrastructure projects supporting UK submarine sustainment programmes.

You will provide technical leadership across complex systems, collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, and ensure safety, quality and regulatory compliance in a nuclear-regulated environment.

This full-time on-site role offers career progression within one of the UK’s leading defence organisations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering required.
• Extensive mechanical engineering experience in regulated environments."],
• job_responsibilities_description([

Responsibilities

• Reviewing mechanical engineering designs for DA compliance.
• Providing technical guidance to support project delivery.
• Assessing integration of mechanical systems with multidisciplinary designs.
• Ensuring safety case requirements are supported with robust engineering solutions.
• Supporting quality, configuration control, testing and acceptance activities.

Skills

Mechanical Engineering

Nuclear experience

Stakeholder engagement

Technical leadership

Design review

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering

Job description

Select how often (in days) to receive an alert:

Principal Mechanical Engineer

Location: Devonport, Plymouth, GB, PL1 4SG

Onsite or Hybrid: OnSite

Job Title: Principal Mechanical Engineer

Compensation: £57,300 - £71,600 Depending on Experience + Benefits

Role Type: Full time / Permanent

Role ID: SF72890

At Babcock we're working to create a safe and secure world, together, and if you join us, you can play your part as a Principal Mechanical Engineer at our Devonport Royal Dockyard site.

The role

As a Principal Mechanical Engineer, you'll play a vital role in delivering major infrastructure projects that support the UK’s submarine sustainment programmes. Working within our Major Infrastructure Projects directorate, you'll provide technical leadership across complex mechanical engineering systems that are essential to maintaining safe, effective, and world-class defence facilities.

Day-to-day, you'll have an opportunity to apply your expertise to nationally significant projects while developing your career within one of the UK's leading engineering and defence organisations. You'll collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, influence major engineering decisions, and help ensure that critical facilities are designed, constructed, and accepted into service safely and effectively. Your work will directly contribute to the operational readiness of vital defence capabilities while advancing innovation, engineering excellence, and safety performance.

• Reviewing mechanical engineering designs to ensure compliance with engineering standards and Design Authority requirements.
• Providing subject matter expertise and technical guidance to support engineering problem solving and project delivery.
• Assessing the integration of mechanical systems with wider multidisciplinary infrastructure designs.
• Ensuring safety case requirements are supported and substantiated through robust engineering solutions.
• Supporting quality, configuration control, testing, and acceptance activities to deliver safe and effective facilities.

This role is full time, 35 hours per week and is based on site at Devonport Royal Dockyard.

Essential experience of the Principal Mechanical Engineer

• Extensive experience in Mechanical Engineering, ideally within marine, defence, infrastructure, or similarly regulated environments.
• Strong experience substantiating high-integrity engineering systems.
• Proven experience managing engineering change within a nuclear regulated environment.
• Experience reviewing, assuring, and approving complex engineering design packages.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and technical leadership capabilities within multidisciplinary project teams.

Qualifications for the Principal Mechanical Engineer

• Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Preferred

• Chartered Engineer registration with the Engineering Council.
• Nuclear Introductory Course qualification or equivalent nuclear industry knowledge.

Security Clearance

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Security Check (SC) security clearance for this role.

Many of the positions within our company are subject to national security clearance and Trade Control restrictions. This means that your eligibility for certain roles may be affected by your place of birth, nationality, current or former citizenship, and any residency you hold or have held. Further details are available at United Kingdom Security Vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) .

What we offer

• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance
• Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+
• Employee shopping savings portal
• Payment of Professional Fees
• Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave
• Holiday Trading is a benefit that allows UK Babcock employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement. This Window opens February through to March annually.
• 'Be Kind Day' enables employees to take one working day's paid leave a year (or equivalent hours) to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity

Babcock

We're Babcock - a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 26,000 people working together to make a difference.

Here, you'll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we're building a future that lasts - not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance.

We call that lifetime engineering.

Join us and see how far we can go, together.

We are a disability confident committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email [e-mail] with the subject header 'Reasonable adjustments requirement'. We're committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone's free to thrive. We are happy to talk about flexible working - please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.

#BABDESTNUC