Senior Design Engineer in Derby

If you're a design engineer at a corporate orthopaedic business who feels like one engineer of twenty on someone else's programme, this is worth a read. I am supporting an orthopaedic manufacturer hiring a Senior Design Engineer to take technical ownership of the knee product line.

What you'll actually own:

• Roughly 70 percent of your time goes into the knee product line.
• You'll look at the test reports and biomechanical evidence behind the product, judge whether the justifications still hold, and write the rationale that lets the team proceed.
• Where retesting is needed, you'll scope it and hand the project management to a junior engineer working alongside you.
• The remainder is real design work: redeveloping existing instruments, refining legacy product, contributing CAD into the wider pipeline.
• Twelve months out, the business plans to add a third bearing configuration to the product. You'll be part of shaping that from the requirements stage onwards.

Why this role is different to most UK orthopaedic design roles:

• You are the technical owner of the product line, not one CAD operator on a programme run by someone else.
• The remit pulls on regulatory, quality and operations.
• You help develop a junior engineer organically, without the formal line management overhead.
• The longer-term pathway is building a junior pipeline behind you as the function grows.

What they need:

• Minimum 5 years in orthopaedics.
• SolidWorks primarily with a track record of leading projects across disciplines.
• Confidence in biomechanical justification and gap analysis on existing technical files.

Package and working arrangement: Senior level supports up to 85 percent remote with a couple of days a month in the office. Apply with an up to date CV and I'll be in touch.