Mechanical Design Engineer

• Help farmers produce better crops and help food producers make their products healthier and more sustainable
• Design and develop cutting-edge, AI-powered industrial machinery that is changing the food sector
• Become part of a major growth journey for a Scottish engineering business: as it grows, so will your career

THE CLIENT

A business that helps farmers save serious money and time on crops that are notoriously hard to harvest, using AI-guided machinery, while turning the part of the crop that is normally left in the field into an ingredient that makes everyday ready meals, burgers and sausages healthier. It works for growers on one side and for food manufacturers on the other, and both get a result they could not get before.

For growers, the machine does work that would normally need a whole crew of seasonal pickers, deciding what to cut in a fraction of a second. It is a simpler, faster and lower-cost design than the alternative on the market, which is a big part of why growers are signing up. For food manufacturers, the ingredient made from what is left behind helps familiar products move towards a better front-of-pack rating, and major UK supermarkets and food manufacturers are already working with the business.

The technology has been four years in development and has come through its commissioning trials this season. It is backed by significant investment, and it is now moving from proven prototype towards a commercial fleet. A new engineering base in Dundee is being set up alongside a planned production operation, with ambitions to take the technology to America and the funding to go after them. It is rare to find a machine that is proven in the field and still early enough that the engineers building it decide where it goes next.

THE ROLE

You will decide how the machine is built. The role is mechanical design of the harvester itself: the cutting head and cutting mechanisms, the gripping and transfer hardware, the structural frame, and the mounting and integration to the carrier vehicle. You will take each of those from concept through detailed design, prototype, verification and field test to release for manufacture, and you will own the drawings and the change record behind them, not just a small corner of the machine.

Because the machine is moving from prototype to a commercial fleet, you will be the person who sets the standard for how it is designed and built. You will apply design for manufacture, assembly and cost, work directly with suppliers on fabrication, machining and assembly, and see your designs come back as real hardware. Your work goes from screen to workshop to field quickly, and you will be there on the field campaigns and commissioning days to see how it performs and to diagnose and fix whatever the crop and the weather throw at it.

You will work in a small engineering team alongside fellow mechanical designers and a principal electrical and electronics engineer, where your ideas are heard and put in place rather than lost in a process. The next challenges are making the machine harvest more selectively and take on more of the work on board, and as the Dundee operation grows and the machine reaches more farms across Scotland and the wider UK, so will the scope of your role.

ABOUT YOU

You are a mechanical design engineer who likes being close to the machine you have designed. You will be fluent in 3D CAD, whether that is SolidWorks, Inventor, Creo or similar, and you will have taken designs from concept through to hardware that works. You may currently be a Mechanical Design Engineer, Design Engineer or Product Development Engineer, perhaps in agricultural, off-highway, construction, forestry, robotics or vehicle-mounted equipment, or coming from an engineering background in the armed forces. Analysis experience such as FEA or CFD, machinery safety design and CE or UKCA marking will all be put to good use, as will any time spent in a start-up or scale-up.

You are equally happy at a screen and in a wet field, and a cold November morning with a machine to get working does not put you off. You prefer ownership to hand-offs, you are confident in your own judgement and quick to change your mind when the evidence says so, and you put your name to your designs and stand behind them. You would rather help shape a fast-moving, iterative business than work from a big company's design library.

THE REWARDS

£48,000 to £62,000 depending on experience.

Full-time, permanent position.

Employer pension contribution.

25 days' holiday plus statutory holidays.

Laptop and the tools you need to do the job.

Ownership of the mechanical design of an AI-guided machine heading from proven prototype to commercial fleet.

A career that grows with the business: a new Dundee engineering base, a production operation alongside it, and more roles to come as the business scales.

Engineering Recruit Scotland recruits Mechanical Design Engineers, Design Engineers, Product Development Engineers and Mechanical Engineers across Scotland. If this sounds like you, get in touch for a confidential conversation.