Mechanical Design Engineer

About the Job

🎯 Mechanical Design Engineer
🌍 London, N4
🏛️ 4 days in our office, 1 day working from home
🤝 Reporting to Daniel Hale
💰 £42-55K + equity

About Shellworks

Our vision is a world where the products around you don't damage our environment or our health. At Shellworks we're making that a reality by creating high performance plastic-free materials for everyday products.

Our technology Vivomer makes the impossible possible. It's grown by bacteria using fermentation, creating a material that is stable in use but degrades in every environment. Its breakthrough is being dishwasherable and home compostable at the same time.

We've closed our Series A and are working with some of the world's most recognised brands to replace plastic at volume. We're at an inflection point: scaling from proof-of-concept to mass-market production.

The Role

This is a high leverage, high agency, high impact role. You will set the specifications for our products, prove them through analysis and testing, and make sure they perform reliably across millions of units. You will use your expertise in mechanical engineering every day to solve hard problems and break down barriers of what people think is possible in a plastic-free product. The products you engineer will be in people’s hands within 6 months, all designed to be healthier in use and to disappear after disposal.

Where the focus is today

Making Vivomer products perform, reliably and at scale.

Engineering

• Own the mechanical engineering of multiple new products at a time, from customer specification to first order

• Set the specifications for every part, and define how each one is tested and validated

• Use tolerance analysis and simulation to de-risk designs before we commit to tooling

• Design parts that play to Vivomer’s strengths, working closely with our materials team

Testing and quality

• Build test rigs, run test plans and make sense of the data

• Lead root cause analysis when parts fail, in the lab or in the field

Manufacturing

• Work with our injection and blow moulding teams on DFM and tooling so designs scale to millions of units

• Travel to partners to solve problems on the line

Beyond

• Help double our project throughput in 2027 by building how we engineer, from processes to tracking tools

Must haves

• A Bachelors Masters in Mechanical or Manufacturing Engineering, with 3-5 years in physical product development

• Deeply technical: 3D CAD, GD&T, tolerance analysis, FEA, DFM, DFA

• You’ve designed plastic parts for injection moulding and understand mould design and polymer behaviour

• A maker: you prototype, test and iterate quickly in the workshop

• A first-principles thinker who always wants to know why something works or fails

• Excited to build the frontier of how materials are made

• Bias to action, comfortable deciding with incomplete information

• High tolerance for ambiguity, low tolerance for silos

What We Offer

🌴 28 days holiday + statutory holidays
👶 12 weeks maternity, 6 weeks paternity, both at full pay
💚 Heka wellbeing allowance - gym, therapy, nutrition, fertility support and more
🩺 Virtual GP with same or next day appointments
🚲 Cycle to work scheme - save up to 42% via salary sacrifice
🍕 Daily catered lunch at the office