Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

AWE is currently looking for Senior Mechanical Design Engineers. The successful candidates will directly contribute to the unique and extraordinary challenges of the Technology Centre, delivering the design and development of equipment for our world-leading test facilities and the experiments conducted with them.

Package: £47,690 - £60,000 (depending on your suitability, qualifications, and level of experience)

Working pattern: AWE operates a 9-day working fortnight. We will consider flexible working requests so that your work may fit in with your lifestyle. Just let us know your preferred working pattern on your application.

Let us introduce the role

The Test and Trials Technology Centre design, build, test and, substantiate the safety and effectiveness of the UK's nuclear deterrent maintaining the Continuous At Sea Deterrent through pioneering science and computational methods. The successful candidates will directly contribute to the design and development of facility systems and equipment required for experiments. We are currently recruiting for several roles across the Technology Centre; a brief summary of the recruiting facilities is shown below.

Orion - Orion is our twelve-beam petawatt laser facility delivering high-energy plasma-physics experiments. To successfully operate the facility our engineer's control and maintain a variety of bespoke mechanisms and structures, in vacuum and free-space, to the exacting tolerances required by optical systems.

Environmental Test Delivery Unit - ETDU operate a comprehensive range of mechanical test equipment and conduct environmental tests both on and offsite. These include Electrodynamic Shaker Systems, Drop Towers, Centrifuges, Climatic Trials and other tests. These trials allow us to simulate real worlds environments and gather valuable data to support computer-based analysis and contribute to future designs.

Hydrodynamics Delivery Unit - HDU- delivering explosively driven experiments required to verify computational models and in service systems. In our specially designed firing chambers, we field explosive trials to provide supporting evidence to current and future weapons programmes alongside managing and develop our high-pressure containment vessel used for toxic experiments. Data is recorded by a variety of advanced diagnostics, such as pulsed power X-Ray machines, high-power lasers, and high-speed cameras.

Ideal Candidates will have the following skills, experience, and behaviours:

• All aspects of delivery - contributing to the conceptual design, detail design, manufacture, assembly, and test of equipment.
• Lead and deliver to the production and delivery of technical documents, reports, and presentations including specifications, design reviews, operational documents, and validation evidence for the engineering solutions.
• Identifying and driving opportunities for cost savings, efficiency, and business improvement.
• Management and support of Engineers in scoping, planning, and estimating future activities.
• Championing development of current and new technologies or capabilities.

Whilst not to be considered a check list, candidates should be able to demonstrate some design experience of complex machinery - Ideally supported by extensive experience working with combinations of:

• Optical systems.
• Vacuum systems.
• Pressure vessels.
• Shaker tables.
• Centrifuges.
• FEA (Finite Element Analysis).
• PLM (Product Lifecycle Management).
• Rig's & fixtures.

Everyone who works at AWE brings unique skills and perspectives to the table. We recognise that great people don't always 'tick every box'. That's why we focus on your potential, your fit with our values, your transferable skills as well as your experience. Even if you don't meet every point below, but you feel that this role and AWE are a great fit for you, please go ahead and apply, we'd love to receive your application.

You'll need to have the ability to work calmly and constructively in a priority changing environment and be able to manage your own workload. You will also have initiative, enthusiasm, a flexible approach, and ability to work to tight deadlines.

Some reasons we think you'll love it here:

AWE has wide range of benefits to suit you. These include:

• In addition, 208 hours of holiday each year (equal to at least 25 days leave) plus Bank Holidays.
• AWE Global Mobility Package
• Market leading contributory pension scheme (we will pay between 9% and 13% of your pensionable pay depending on your contributions).
• Family friendly policies: Maternity Leave - 39 Weeks Full Pay and Paternity Leave - 4 Weeks Full Pay.
• Opportunities for Professional Career Development including funding for annual membership of a relevant professional body.
• Employee Assistance Programme and Occupational Health Services.
• Life Assurance (4 x annual salary).
• Discounts - access to savings on a wide range of everyday spending.
• Special Leave Policy including paid time off for volunteering, public service (including reserve forces) and caring.

The 'Working at AWE' page on our website is where you can find full details in the 'AWE Benefits Guide'.

Important things you need to know:

• You will need to obtain and maintain the necessary security clearance for the role. This will be funded by AWE. The nature of our work does mean you need to be a British Citizen who has been resident in the UK for the past 5 years in order to apply for SC clearance and 10 years for DV.
• We want you to feel comfortable and able to shine during our recruitment process. Please let us know on your application form if you need any adjustments/accommodations during the process.
• Our interviews typically take place over Teams and for most roles are a 1 stage process.

Due to the classified nature of the work involved, there are limited opportunities to work from home in this role. It is anticipated that the successful candidate will spend the majority of their time working on site at AWE Aldermaston.

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