Senior Systems Innovation Engineer

Lavazza Professional is the Business-to-business (B2B) arm of Lavazza Group; as a brand we have grown over the last 120 years from a small Italian artisanal company to an industrial giant. We remain family owned and our passion for quality coffee is coupled with a spirit of entrepreneurship, defined by innovation and a sense of responsibility. At Lavazza Professional, our goal is to fuel workplace productivity and wellness. We bring high performance vending technologies to offices and factory floors across the UK, partnering with some of the nation’s best loved drinks brands. As a company, we are proud to announce our “Roadmap to Zero”, our aim is to completely neutralise the Group’s carbon footprint by the end of 2030. With an investment of about €50million in the 2020-2025 period, you can be proud to join a company dedicated to sustainability, innovation, and employee development.

This is a contractor position and will be paid inside IR35 through one of our providers, more details can be provided.

The role operates in the Discover and Translate phases of the PLC to support the invention and introduction of novel brewing systems. This role has responsibility for the exploration, specification, and development of novel and complex Hydraulic and Mechatronic systems for use within vending equipment. The role serves to interpret marketing briefs and/or business requirements and lead the translation of them into innovative component and system technologies suitable for integration into future brewer developments.

Key Responsibilities:

• Operate in a senior role within the Systems Innovation and Technology Group whose function is to identify, conceptualise, evaluate and develop new low-medium TRL systems to enable the improvement of our beverage offerings.
• Carry out initial proof of concept and feasibility of proposed new products, systems, or methods.
• Deliver innovative Hydraulic and Mechatronic systems, in close collaboration with the Product Development function, into the Equipment Development framework.
• Support the Maintenance of Business and Product Development functions with the provision of subject knowledge for the specification and validation of systems and components.
• Develop strong market, content, and technology knowledge, understanding the competition, the background of technologies, and the current and future trends.
• Translate Product Briefs and/or customer and consumer needs, into innovative systems that meet all the demands of the market segment for which they are intended.
• Secure input and agreement of stakeholders to legitimise concept proposals and demonstrate compliance to product requirements.
• Ensure new system proposals are developed collaboratively, taking input from internal subject matter experts and legitimising proposals through a series of concept reviews, DFMEA’s and DVP’s as appropriate.
• Effectively translate customer needs and market requirements into defined top level product architectures and robust, structured, unambiguous design requirement and functional specifications desirable, feasible, and viable.
• Act as the technical lead on innovation projects defining specifications requirements from stakeholder input and creating system design concepts that meet these requirements.
• Define and develop prototype control systems to verify the performance of conceptual designs using industry standard prototype control hardware.
• Gather, Interpret, Evaluate and Analyse experimental or theoretical results to make data-driven decisions.

Scope: Reporting to the Systems Innovation and Technology Manager, the Systems Innovation team exists to drive innovation across our brewing platforms. The team works on projects which extend from conceptualisation to delivery of technologies at suitable maturity levels for introduction to our Equipment Development Process. As a Senior Engineering position, this role will act as the project manager and/or individual contributor in the discover phase of the Product Lifecycle. The role will generate and capture IP, developing new component and sub-system technologies in line with technology roadmap and innovation strategies to up to the requisite Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) support implementation into future products. The role shall define and develop novel cross-disciplinary sub-systems in collaboration with discipline specific engineers. This role will also dictate, design and perform system characterisation activities on prototype systems using industry standard data acquisition and processing tools. Functioning as a subject matter expert and technical authority, the role will input into quality management systems related to product incidents, concessions, and material quality management frameworks in line with corporate standards.

Education and Qualifications needed:

• Honours Degree in General Engineering or related engineering subject.
• Ideally, certificated evidence of continued professional development such as a Master’s degree.
• Ideally, member of IET or IMechE and Engineering Council.

Knowledge and Experience needed:

• Working knowledge of R&D front end innovation methodologies.
• Working knowledge of formal project management, product development, and new product introduction processes, including the authoring of design requirement specifications.
• Experience in technical project management and directing a cross-discipline and cross-functional teams in the delivery of technical projects.
• Ability to see the big picture and seek innovations that display sound technological and business judgement.
• Demonstrable critical thinking ability and sound use of engineering judgement.
• Solid understanding of fluid and heat flow and a good understanding of how these apply to system architectures used in vending machines.
• Working knowledge of the manufacturing techniques employed in mechatronic products, specifically plastic injection moulding, casting and metal forming.
• In depth knowledge of technologies relevant to drinks vending; e.g. pumps, motors, valves, heating, chilling (not exhaustive).
• Working knowledge of at least one 3D mechanical CAD package, ideally Solidworks or Creo.
• In depth knowledge of software environments for prototype control, data acquisition, and analysis, ideally LabVIEW.
• Good practical skills for the design, build, and commissioning of prototypes and test rigs.
• Good understanding hardware and software disciplines specifically related to the control of mechatronic systems.
• Ability to build collaborative working relationships with peers in and adjacent disciplines and functions.
• Knowledge of APQP design techniques of DFX (Manufacture, Assembly, Service etc.) and FMEA.
• Experienced in application of system-level FMEA or equivalent techniques for technical risk assessment.
• Good knowledge of office applications.
• Good knowledge of techniques for data analysis using Excel or other mathematic applications.

Please only apply if you are located within the UK due to the nature of the interview process. The successful candidate will be subject to background checks which may include a DBS check.