Chief Design Engineer in Maidenhead

Due to Hewland’s continued expansion and strong product portfolio across both motorsport, future automotive, and aerospace, we are seeking an experienced project manager to lead and oversee gearbox design & manufacturing projects within our company, specializing in serving clients in the automotive, defence and aerospace industries.

Hewland Engineering is relied upon by many of the world’s top motorsport teams, performance car constructors, and hybrid and electric transportation innovators to extract the performance and reliability they require to get their high-performance transmission challenges done. Whatever the nature of your next motorsport or vehicle engineering project might be, Hewland can help with off-the-shelf and bespoke solutions along with design consulting and manufacturing expertise. At Hewland we believe that good customer service is every bit as important as a strong product.

Core Requirements

• Degree qualified or similar qualification.
• Minimum 10 years of transmission design engineering experience.
• Strong communication, information transfer and inter-personal skills with practical, pro-active hands-on approach.
• Capable of working efficiently as a team leader to tight deadlines.
• Strong leadership skills and management skills.
• Detailed knowledge of Transmission design, development, validation and test processes.
• Logical and structured thought process with an ability to define and manage complex programme objectives.
• Great innovation and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to motivate, influence, and manage people effectively.
• Ability to self-teach, instruct others and apply deep technical content.
• Can demonstrate experience in applying DFMEAs to engineering product design.
• Has a proven track record of controlling designs through standard engineering processes (with the use of PLM systems) and can lead the sign-off of production 2D drawings with geometric tolerancing.
• Advanced knowledge/skills in CAD modelling in one of the major software packages.
• Proven ability to lead and grow a team and inspire them to achieve positive results and maintain high standards of performance on projects.
• Commercially aware, understanding the impact of programme decisions affecting production and customer delivery.
• Has a strong understanding of how the mobility market is changing and what the latest trends are.
• Proficiency in using Microsoft Office tools.

Main Activities/tasks

• Chief engineer design programmes from Concept to Hardware Validation.
• Work in a cross-functional manner to enable great cross department collaboration.
• Technically lead/support the design team to achieve team targets.
• Gatekeeper for best engineering design practice and GD&T.
• Manage and review transmission layout design and DMU evaluation.
• Consult on the design and analysis of components.
• Provide technical support and advice on transmission design & manufacture projects.
• Responsible for the review of transmission design and driveline system and components.
• Develop technical scopes of work to support proposal generation with the Sales team.
• Supplier management and assessment.
• Lead DFMEA activities.
• Responsible for the design improvement and quality problem solving for Transmission systems and components.
• Apply new Transmission and components technologies, techniques and advanced materials.
• Provide in-house training and mentoring of engineers.
• Participation in decisions around recruiting, appraising, and mentoring design staff.
• Building of relationships with technical and academic bodies to ensure awareness of latest technologies and manufacturing developments.
• Input into the Technical Roadmap with respect to new innovations to support growth and developing new CAE methods & CAD workflows to increase efficiency.