Desirable: Degree or HND in Mechanical or Aerospace engineering, knowledge of Matlab/Simulink with a proven ability to model and predict mechanism performance.

Previous Experience

Essential: Design, analysis, manufacturing and testing of mechanism performance against a detailed specification. Team worker, ability to delegate work effectively and efficiently to other team members.

Desirable: Previous experience in the space and/or aerospace industry. Experience of working with mechanisms in extreme environment applications, experience in development of new mechanism concepts and with composition of winning proposals. Experience with mechanical analysis packages for mechanisms analysis, such as Adams would be an asset.

The role
Engineer supporting mechanisms production, but also with support to other mechanisms design activities including bid work and new mechanisms design for Science programmes. Technical work will include new developments and evolution of existing SADM and Antenna pointing products and support to the Earth Observation and Science directorate for mechanical systems development activities related to robotics.

Application of space experience for key risk mitigation and trouble shooting on new and established product builds is fundamental to the role. Responsibilites may include producing documentation such as test plans/procedures/reports, torque margin analyses, life predictions, reliability analyses and various technical notes such as design descriptions. It is required to be able to liaise with customers and to make technical presentations to both customers and internal management. .

Core products of the department include antenna deployment and pointing mechanisms and solar array drive mechanisms (SADM). Examples of 1-off mechanisms include: separation system for an interplanetary spacecraft (Bepi Columbo), a large boom deployment system for space science (SWARM). Proposal and systems support for various Mars missions is ongoing.