Standardisation Engineer

At Rolls‑Royce SMR, our mission is simple and ambitious: to deliver clean, affordable and secure energy for all. Our Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology provides a British‑designed, globally impactful solution to the world’s energy and climate challenges. We are positioned to become the UK’s premier green export technology and a world leader in SMR deployment, driving innovation that supports national energy security and accelerates the journey to net‑zero.

You’ll join our Standardisation & Standard Parts team — a group dedicated to reducing product variation, optimising plant‑wide consistency, and driving meaningful cost and workflow efficiencies. The team plays a critical role in ensuring our SMR design is repeatable, scalable and efficient across multiple islands, vendors, and engineering disciplines. The team collaborates across Engineering, Supply Chain, Commercial, CAD, Safety, EC&I, and Civils, acting as a key integrator.

This is a high‑impact engineering opportunity where you will help shape the SMR of the future. You will champion standardisation, variation reduction, and product optimisation, enabling the business to design and deliver an SMR that is cost‑effective, high‑quality, and globally deployable. Your work will directly influence component interfaces, supplier alignment, engineering efficiency, and the overall maturity of our plant design.

What You Will Be Doing

• Drive the standardisation strategy, ensuring components and products across the plant follow defined standardisation rules, tools, and processes.
• Review engineering artefacts to identify opportunities to reduce variation and enhance repeatability.
• Optimise product grouping across islands and vendors, highlighting opportunities for simplification, workflow efficiency, and resource/time savings.
• Support the creation and development of the Standard Parts Catalogue and associated engineering tools.
• Produce technical reports, ensuring clarity of compliance, rationale and decisions related to standardisation.
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to align design approaches, resolve variation issues, and ensure integration across multiple teams.

The Impact You Will Have

Your work will directly unlock design efficiency, repeatability, and cost reduction across the entire SMR programme. By simplifying interfaces, enabling consistent design approaches and removing unnecessary complexity, you will help accelerate engineering throughput and improve programme certainty. This is a chance to influence one of the UK's most meaningful clean‑energy programmes and to see your work directly reflected in the design and delivery of a first‑of‑a‑kind SMR.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Degree or equivalent in an engineering discipline.
• Experience applying standardisation, variation reduction, or configuration control in complex engineering environments.
• Ability to review and interpret drawings, P&IDs, GAs, and detailed engineering documentation.
• Strong stakeholder skills, collaborating confidently across engineering, suppliers and commercial teams.
• Familiarity with analytical or decision‑making tools such as AHP, and optionally tools such as PowerBI, Python, DOORS, Teamcenter.

Location & Hybrid Working

We offer flexible, hybrid working with access to offices in Derby, Warrington, or Manchester. Expected on‑site frequency is typically 1–2 days per week, but this will be discussed individually during the recruitment process.

Pay And Benefits

We anticipate paying a salary of between £44,600 - £55,000 DOE plus:

• Bonus – Performance related target opportunity 12.5%
• Benefits Allowance – £2,200 per annum, enabling you to create a bespoke package
• Pension - 12% employer and 6% employee contributions
• Holidays - 28 days holiday (+ public holidays) and the ability to buy or sell up to 4 days
• Private Medical Insurance - BUPA single cover health care
• Life Assurance - 6x pensionable pay
• £250 - One‑off payment for new starters for home office purchases

Why Join Us?

You’ll be joining a forward‑thinking organisation that values transparency, fairness, and innovation. We offer:

• A flexible, inclusive, and supportive working environment.
• Opportunities for career growth in a rapidly scaling business.
• A culture that values diversity, innovation, and continuous learning.

We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all backgrounds. Inclusivity is important to us, and as a Disability Confident organisation, we are committed to fair, supportive, and continually improving recruitment practices that ensure everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Confidence can sometimes hold us back from applying for a job. But we’ll let you in on a secret: there’s no such thing as a 'perfect' candidate. If you feel you meet 75% of the requirements for this role, we would love to hear from you. Also, if you are considering a career move or a sector‑jump, please get in touch – we welcome applications from people with transferable skills.

Our Application Process

Due to the safety regulations within the nuclear industry, applicants will be required to participate in additional screening. These are:

• Obtaining Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) clearance
• Satisfactory completion of a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check
• Satisfactory completion of a basic financial probity check