Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Alicat Scientific; Tucson (AZ); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Alicat Scientific in Tucson, AZ seeks a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer to own significant portions of mechanical hardware for high-precision flow and pressure instrumentation. You will take designs from concept through production release, balancing detailed drawings with physics-based analysis.

The role requires deep understanding of mechanical fundamentals, GD&T, and cross-functional collaboration with product, electrical, and firmware teams.

Qualifications

• 6+ years designing precision mechanical, fluidic, or electromechanical products through production.
• Fundamentals across mechanics of materials, dynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics.
• Experience with COMSOL Multiphysics and ANSYS (Mechanical/Fluent/Maxwell).
• Depth in at least two of structural mechanics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, electromagnetics.
• 3D CAD and production drawing skills with GD&T and tolerance stack-up analysis.
• Design-for-manufacturing across processes and direct supplier work.
• Experimental design and testing with correlation of simulation results to measured data.
• BS in Mechanical Engineering; MS a plus.
• Experience with solenoid or proportional valve electromagnetic actuators.
• Experience with gas flow, laminar flow elements, or precision flow metrology.
• Programming with Python, MATLAB/Simulink, or LabVIEW.

Responsibilities

• Develop new flow measurement and control products from concept through production release.
• Apply first-principles engineering across statics, dynamics, and thermal considerations.
• Create production-quality 3D models and drawings with GD&T.
• Perform worst-case and statistical tolerance stack-up analyses.
• Select materials and finishes for precision, corrosion resistance, and stability.
• Design for manufacture across molding, machining, welding, and extrusion; work with suppliers.
• Perform structural and thermal analysis on components and assemblies.
• Model solenoid actuators and magnetic systems; assess dynamic response.
• Use CFD to analyze gas and liquid flow; build coupled or decoupled analyses.
• Plan and execute design verification, validation, and reliability testing.

Skills

3D CAD

GD&T

Tolerance analysis

FEM analysis

Root cause analysis

Prototype iteration

Cross-functional teamwork

Design for manufacturing

Python scripting

Finite element analysis

Education

BS in Mechanical Engineering

MS in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

SolidWorks

COMSOL Multiphysics

ANSYS (Mechanical)

MATLAB/Simulink

LabVIEW

Job description

At Alicat, engineers design hardware and firmware that are built, tested, and manufactured under the same roof, giving you direct ownership and immediate impact on real products.

We specialize in high-performance instrumentation for measuring and controlling flow and pressure.

Our products support aerospace, bioprocessing, energy, environmental science, and advanced research, where precision, stability, and reliability are essential.

Our engineering environment is tightly integrated and highly collaborative. We avoid bureaucracy, make decisions quickly, and value engineers who take ownership and enjoy solving real technical problems.

All our instruments are built in-house at our Tucson, Arizona facility. This vertical integration gives engineers full visibility from concept through production, enabling rapid iteration and strong cross-functional collaboration.

Alicat’s mission is to accelerate the evolution of science and technology by giving researchers and innovators the tools to explore, build, and solve complex challenges. We are part of Halma plc, a global FTSE 100 group focused on growing a safer, cleaner, healthier future. Through Halma, we benefit from long-term stability and investment while maintaining the agility and culture of a mid-sized engineering team.

If you want to work at the intersection of physics-based analysis and precision mechanical design, and help build instrumentation that enables the next generation of technological breakthroughs, Alicat is an exceptional place to do it.

Job Summary

As a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at Alicat Scientific, you will design and own significant portions of the mechanical hardware that makes our high-precision flow and pressure instrumentation work. You will take designs from concept through detailed design, prototyping, validation, and production release.

The engineer who thrives here is equally comfortable specifying a fit and finish on a drawing and building the model that explains why the design behaves that way. Both halves matter, and most candidates are genuinely strong in only one.

You will work at the boundary between mechanical design and applied physics. Our instruments are small, precise, and physically demanding, so the design decisions are frequently driven by structural, thermal, fluid, and electromagnetic behavior that is not obvious by inspection. You will use analysis and simulation to answer those questions early, and correlate what you model against what the bench actually shows.

Mechanical fundamentals carry the rest of the work. You will select materials and components, run tolerance stack-ups, produce production-quality models and drawings, design for manufacture, and work directly with our machine shops and suppliers to get prototypes built and iterated quickly.

This is a deeply hands-on individual contributor role. You will spend most of your time designing, analyzing, and testing hardware, and you will be trusted to work independently on problems that are ambiguous at the start. Seniority here means technical depth and ownership of outcomes rather than management responsibility.

Technical Functions

• Develop new flow measurement and control products, including sensors, proportional valves, flow bodies, laminar flow elements, manifolds, and enclosures, from early-stage concept through production release.
• Apply first-principles engineering across statics and dynamics, mechanics of materials, spring and sealing loads, thermal expansion, and pressure containment.
• Create production-quality 3D models and detailed drawings in SolidWorks, applying GD&T so that design intent survives the handoff to manufacturing and inspection.
• Perform worst-case and statistical tolerance stack-up analysis on assemblies where small dimensional variation drives measurable performance change.
• Select materials, seals, springs, fasteners, coatings, and surface treatments for precision, corrosion resistance, cleanliness, and long-term dimensional stability.
• Design for manufacture across molded, welded, etched, stamped, machined, and extruded components, specifying fits, finishes, and inspection criteria, and conducting DFMEA and manufacturability reviews.
• Perform structural and thermal analysis covering stress, deflection, modal response, fatigue life, sealing and press-fit loads, temperature gradients, self-heating, and the effect of thermal behavior on measurement stability.
• Perform magnetic modeling of solenoid actuators, including force versus stroke, coil sizing and power, pull-in and drop-out, nonlinear material behavior, and dynamic response under PWM drive.
• Use CFD to analyze gas and liquid flow through laminar flow elements, valve geometries, and sensor channels, building coupled analyses where the physical domains interact and simpler decoupled models where they do not.
• Plan and execute design verification, validation, and reliability testing, and correlate simulation results against measured data to decide what to redesign or measure next.

Cross-Functional Work

• Own your designs end to end, from requirements definition through production release and long-term sustainment.
• Represent mechanical scope in product development planning, work breakdown, and design reviews, presenting designs and analysis results and incorporating feedback from across the engineering team.
• Contribute to system-level design discussions across mechanical, electrical, and firmware.
• Lead root cause analysis on mechanical issues found during system integration, validation, and field escalations.
• Work with suppliers and internal manufacturing to build and iterate prototypes and to resolve production issues.
• Translate product and application requirements into workable technical scope in partnership with Product Management, Sales, and Applications Engineering, and document design rationale and analysis assumptions so the work is reusable.

Qualifications - Education and Experience

• 6+ years designing precision mechanical, fluidic, or electromechanical products, with hardware you took through to production.
• Mechanical engineering fundamentals across mechanics of materials, dynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics, with comfort working from first principles.
• Physics-based analytical and simulation skills applied to real design decisions rather than coursework. We use COMSOL Multiphysics as our primary simulation environment, and deep ANSYS experience (Mechanical, Fluent, Maxwell) is equally welcome.
• Depth in at least two of structural mechanics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and electromagnetics, with the ability to come up to speed on the rest.
• 3D CAD and production drawing skills, including GD&T and tolerance stack-up analysis. SolidWorks experience preferred.
• Design-for-manufacturing experience across processes such as precision machining, molding, sheet metal, and welding, including direct work with suppliers.
• Experimental design and testing skills, and a track record of correlating simulation results with measured data and explaining the discrepancies clearly.
• BS in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related engineering or physics discipline required; MS is a plus.
• Direct experience with solenoid, proportional valve, or other electromagnetic actuator design preferred.
• Experience with compressible or low-Reynolds-number gas flow, laminar flow elements, or precision flow metrology preferred.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB/Simulink, or LabVIEW for parametric studies, optimization, or automated model-to-test comparison preferred.
• Also valued: process control instrumentation, metrology, or calibration; precision and magnetic materials such as soft magnetic alloys, plating, and heat treatment; and product safety or agency certification experience.