R39521 - Principal Manufacturing Test Engineer

Senior Test Engineer, Electronics NPI   Based in Stevenage   Salary Circa £52,000 + bonus   Most test engineers inherit a product someone else designed and a test set someone else built. This role is different. You’d be in at the start, while the product is still in design, shaping how it gets tested before a single board is populated.   That means sitting with the design engineers and pushing for testability early. Writing the test specifications. Kicking off test fixture designs. Estimating how long new product will take to test. Helping manufacturing build the first process flows, feeding test mitigations into the PFMEA, and supporting functional and environmental testing on the first prototypes.   And when things fail, which early on they do, you’re the one diagnosing faults on circuit card assemblies and electronic sub-assemblies down to component level, using manual test kit and ATE, and working out whether the fix lives in the design, the process or the test.   You’ll carry it all the way to Production Readiness Review, then hand Operations a test capability they can actually run.   The team is small, friendly and a proper mix, apprentices and graduates through to seasoned test engineers, working across missile systems in development and production. It’s on-site in Stevenage four to five days a week, because the hardware is. Worth knowing before you apply.   This role needs a high level of security clearance, so they can only consider candidates holding sole British citizenship.   What you’ll need:

• HNC (Level 4) or above in Electrical, Electronic, Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering, Physics or Maths, including electronic or electrical principles
• Solid experience as a test engineer in electronics manufacturing, ideally defence, aerospace or another high-reliability sector
• Hands-on fault finding on PCBs, circuit card assemblies and electro-mechanical sub-assemblies, down to component level
• Experience with both manual test equipment and automated test equipment (ATE)
• Confidence writing test specifications, operator instructions and technical reports from higher-level requirements
• Experience recording test activity and raising non-conformance reports or concessions in an ERP or MES system, such as SAP

Nice to have:

• NPI test engineering, from early design through to production release
• Design for test (DFT) input on new electronic product
• Test fixture design
• PFMEA experience
• Functional and environmental testing of prototypes

What’s in it for you:

• Circa £52,000 depending on experience
• Company bonus of up to £2,500
• Pension of up to 14% combined
• Paid overtime
• Up to 15 extra days of flexi leave