Job Title: Principal Design Engineer / Assistant Chief Engineer - Driveline and Transmission Systems

Location: Leamington Spa UK, Shoreham-by-Sea UK / Hybrid

Role ID: 2025-3123

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world. 

Ricardo, member of WSP, is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Purpose 

Ricardo’s A&I Division are seeking an enthusiastic and dynamic Principal Design Engineer / Assistant Chief Engineer, you will be a part of the Global Mechanical Design team responsible for leading activities in the design of a wide range of Driveline & Transmission Systems for a variety of market sectors (Automotive, Aerospace, Defense, Marine, Clean energy), from clean sheet to production.  

You will take responsibility for leading a team of mechanical designers to deliver a particular mechanical system or complete product and will need to manage and work effectively with other Engineering disciplines to develop system level solutions to implement designs, that satisfy component, system, product, and client requirements. You will support the mechanical design team to grow our capabilities and skills and will cooperate with the business development team in developing proposals and responding to client queries.  

Duties and Responsibilities 

• Concept and definitive 3D mechanical design of systems, system assemblies and complex components such as transmission casings, rotating components, gears, injection moulded components. 
• Detailed mechanical design work including basic stress calculations, FMEA’s, 2D detailing, 2D layouts, Tolerance stacks as required.  
• Close cooperation with FEA, CFD and Simulation teams to ensure products meet design validation requirements.
• Close cooperation with manufacturing and process engineers to ensure products meet DFMA
• Management of Bill of Materials.
• Creation of technical reports and documentation as required for engineering projects. 
• Liaison with suppliers and other Ricardo departments to ensure the required information is available when needed and customer requests are dealt with in a timely manner.
• Responsibility for coaching and mentoring design engineers in design techniques and departmental processes.
• Ability to take on project roles such as Chief Designer or Chief Engineer as required by projects, ability to lead small- to mid-size project teams. 
• Support to the business development team with inputs on mechanical design related details.
• Understanding of market sector trends and market development.

Qualifications and Experience 

• Degree (Bachelor or Masters) in Mechanical Engineering or similar field or with equivalent technical experience.
• Substantive experience in Mechanical Design Engineering.  
• Broad range of mechanical design knowledge specializing in one of the following areas: Transmission, Hybrid transmissions, EDU’s. 
• Solid understanding of mechanical engineering principles with ability to interpret FEA, CFD results and incorporate them in mechanical design. 
• Solid understanding of manufacturing processes, and their impact on design, experience with DFMA.
• Ability to understand, produce and check 2D technical drawings to a high standard with high GD&T competency.
• 3D CAD skills with one or more major CAD systems (e.g. CREO, CATIA, NX)
• Experience with PLM systems, Windchill
• Leadership of small teams.
• Advanced capabilities in Microsoft Office.

Personal Attributes 

• Confident, proactive and adaptive ability to take the lead in challenging situations to achieve company goals and objectives. 
• Acting as a role model representing the company values. 
• Strong technical and report writing communication skill in English. 
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills.
• Able to prioritize and organize multiple project workloads and tasks working to tight deadlines. 
• Able to travel to support Ricardo’s worldwide client base.

Working with Ricardo 

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place. 

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable. 

Wellbeing and work life balance 

Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programs and policies that support individuals including flexible working, careers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance program. 

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps 

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date. 

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.

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