Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

CIBSE Journal; Amesbury; Hybrid; GBP 130,000 - 144,000; Full time

Job summary

CIBSE Journal is seeking a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer for a 6-month contract in Amesbury. Hybrid work with occasional travel to Farnborough and Malvern.

Clearance eligibility required. The role focuses on leading mechanical design delivery, guiding teams, and coordinating design reviews across multiple domains including aircraft modification and ship design.

Qualifications

• HNC/HND/Degree in Aeronautical, Electrical, Electronic or Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design or Product Design (or equivalent experience).
• Significant CAD/PDM experience, using various CAD systems.
• Experience in manufacturing/defence environment with exposure to various methods.
• Ability to lead design reviews and manage complex tasks within regulatory and governance frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Lead delivery of mechanical design solutions and own delivery on complex tasks.
• Guide others in generating hardware solutions and coordinate design reviews.
• Write detailed reports and manage technical teams to deliver optimized designs.
• Ensure regulatory compliance and governance of the design process.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Design reviews

Problem solving

Design thinking

Value stream mapping

Risk management

Education

HNC/HND/Degree in Aeronautical or Mechanical Engineering

Tools

CAD tools

FEA/CFD software

Job description

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Duration: 6 months

Rate: 70 per hour inside IR35 via Umbrella

Location: Amesbury Hybrid (travel to Farnborough/ Malvern required ad hoc)

SC Clearance/ eligibility required

Role Purpose

Being a go–to individual within the Allocated Design Team & surrounding SME's, the Senior Engineer – Mechanical Designer's Main role will be leading the delivery of Mechanical Design solutions and taking ownership of delivery on complex tasks, requiring high integrity engineering and managing complex, unusual tasks involving significant challenges.

They will explore and test the problem space thoroughly, guiding others in generating their own hardware solutions and be prepared to lead and co–coordinate the reviews and testing of these ideas at design reviews and group critiques to delight customers.

The company support numerous Domains, such as Aircraft Modification, Land Platforms Development & Autonomy and Ship design. Each Team will have unique engineering specialities & focusses. The individual will have gained significant and wide–ranging experience in the domain specific technical skills of a complex nature – E.g. FEA, CFD, Thermal Analysis, compliance by way of example.

Key Accountabilities

Reviews:

• Can Guide others and corral SME's at Design Reviews & hold pre–reviews, Chair Reviews for internal tasks / lower level, single customers; may be working towards Design Review Chair competency
• Exhibits Gravitas coupled with captivating and compelling content to sell a persuasive stance / argument; Makes concepts immersive / real to the customer
• Responsible for bringing together & chairing Engineering reviews
• Sets the expectation / culture in the local team – encourages higher standards.

Delivery:

• Able to write detailed reports and manage technical teams to deliver optimised designs.
• Understands verification & validation needs & sets up the requirement gathering to maximise success for later stages
• Understands the regulatory environment & needs of the project
• Uses Prototyping mentality beyond hardware creation
• Foresees overspend & helps the PM keep the project on track.
• Works with the PM to recognised realisation of risk and exploit externally driven change
• Proactively addresses potential issues – can forecast where we may have unresolved / unrealised Risk & has a multi–pronged strategy to avoid the Risk, mitigate the Risk
• Excellent communication skills & rigour on driving daily delivery
• Understands team dynamics, human behaviours & an interest in psychology to maximise delivery success
• Understands the value proposition Design are trying to bring by delivering this piece of work & ensures we keep focus on maximising that value.
• Can oversee the putting together of TDP's and knows how to ensure they are robust
• Supports others in developing their creative confidence to experiment.
• Go–to individual for applying design thinking methodology beyond design
• May be able to Value Stream Map & show others how to maximise Value for the customer
• Can Sign off complicated Estimates with multiple inputs beyond their skill area
• Adept at using the 7 wastes to find opportunities to reduce effort/minimise WIP/Maximise throughput
• Strong appreciation for what the customer budget is and can tailor the solution & estimate to suit the budget
• Experienced Pace setting – sets the tone & makes the pace & comms cadence requirements clear from the offset

Technical:

• Provides advice or presentation to customers, stakeholders and peers.
• Maintain high levels of integrity when measuring – outcome of measurements may be political / have regulatory or business implications
• Able to directly negotiate with customers over requirements & cost
• Competent at trading requirements with the PM/Systems engineer/customer as appropriate
• Able to provide critique & review delivery strategies from the beginning to the end of a project from a DFM view
• Has excellent understanding and knowledge of both external and internal manufacturing techniques
• Has a good knowledge and understanding of Regulatory and Governance of the design process
• Able to use CAD tools beyond the obvious intended use; employs clean thinking on Feature trees
• Deep understanding of Technical Drawings as a communications method – offering clarity & accuracy of information
• Go to person for best practice & input to design methodology & takes feedback from external sources
• May use bespoke/ specialist software such as FEA/CFD etc.

Domain specific expertise

Governance:

• Is familiar with which safety engineering tools can be used at particular stages of a project lifecycle.
• Compile HAZ ID & contribute to Design Safety Cases
• Can assist in researching corporate policies
• Managing the quality assurance and authoring processes
• Understands statistical approaches to Safety
• Holds Technical Lead LCM 2 delegation
• Drawing check Sig & Release for HCC2 Drawings; with a Deep understanding and experience of Tolerancing & dimension styles
• May be a Design Cert (QDC) Sig– non regulated commercial work HCC2 (SDA For simple tasks)

Experience & Qualifications

• HNC/HND/Degree in Aeronautical, Electrical, Electronic or Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design or Product Design (or equivalent experience)
• Extensive CAD/ PDM's experience, using various CAD systems
• Extensive experience with owning packets of work
• Significant experience creating technical Drawings from 3D Models, working with suppliers, manufacturers, customers, and subject matter experts.
• Significant experience creating concepts & generating solution ideas and exposing those ideas to critique
• Deep understanding of budgets, quality & cost
• Has likely spent significant time in a manufacturing/ defence environment with exposure to various manufacturing methods