Senior Manufacturing Engineer

Company: David Brown Defence
Location: Huddersfield, HD4 7AN
Salary: Up to £65,000 depending on experience
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Monday to Friday, 37.5 hours
Travel: Up to 5% UK
Security: Security clearance required

The Role

David Brown Defence is looking for an experienced Senior Manufacturing Engineer to support complex manufacturing and assembly operations within its Huddersfield facility.

The role will provide technical leadership across production, working closely with Manufacturing, Design Engineering and Quality to solve manufacturing problems, improve processes and ensure components can be manufactured efficiently and accurately.

A key part of the position is developing expertise across gear manufacture, particularly hobbing, shaping, profile grinding and finish grinding, alongside supporting the business's move towards more digital measurement methods.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical guidance and problem solving to manufacturing and assembly teams
• Become a Subject Matter Expert for gear profile generation, including hobbing, shaping and profile grinding
• Support finish grinding of journals, cones and thrust faces
• Assess component manufacturability and machine-tool capability
• Provide manufacturing input into engineering design reviews
• Lead PFMEAs, process mapping and risk mitigation
• Interpret technical drawings and create manufacturing/stage drawings
• Drive continuous improvement across quality, cycle time and manufacturing processes
• Design bespoke manufacturing methods and tooling
• Create works orders, technical packs, routings and operations
• Ensure manufacturing processes incorporate Quality Assurance requirements
• Support digital measurement methods and automation of measurement data processing
• Provide training and technical guidance to Production and Quality teams
• Support manufacturing activities involving heat-treated components

What We're Looking For

• Strong Manufacturing Engineering experience within precision mechanical manufacturing
• Knowledge of rotating component manufacture, including turning, boring and milling
• Experience or strong knowledge of gear manufacturing processes
• Strong understanding of GD&T and dimensional measurement
• Ability to interpret technical drawings and create/approve manufacturing drawings
• Experience of CNC programming
• Good understanding of manufacturing methods and machine-tool capability
• Experience leading PFMEAs and continuous improvement activities
• 2D and 3D CAD capability
• SAP knowledge within a manufacturing environment
• Understanding of heat-treatment processes
• Ability to provide technical guidance, training and mentoring
• Minimum Diploma-level qualification with relevant experience

About David Brown Defence

David Brown Defence provides high-integrity mechanical power transmission solutions for naval and land defence applications, with extensive expertise in complex gearing and precision manufacturing.

The position will require the successful candidate to meet the relevant security clearance and export-control requirements.

For our search, this makes the hierarchy much clearer: gears/rotating component manufacture → machining/CNC → GD&T/dimensional measurement → PFMEA/process improvement → CAD/tooling → technical leadership. That's much closer to the background of the candidate DBD already offered as well.