Senior Production Engineer

Chess Dynamics Ltd • Permanent • Horsham, West Sussex, England, United Kingdom • £45k - £50k / year • 1h ago

The Senior Production Engineer is a technical leader responsible for defining, developing, and optimising the end-to-end production capability for defence-grade hardware systems. This role provides strategic influence across design, industrialisation, and full-rate manufacturing, ensuring products are engineered for reliability, regulatory compliance, and scalable delivery.

Operating within a secure and highly regulated environment, the Senior Production Engineer drives manufacturing excellence through robust process development, disciplined configuration control, and structured risk management. The role champions Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA), strengthens cross-functional collaboration between engineering and operations, and ensures production readiness from prototype through series manufacture.

As a senior technical authority, the role mentors engineering teams, guides continuous improvement initiatives, and leads the development of resilient production solutions for complex electro-mechanical systems, supporting both programme delivery and long-term operational capability.

Key Responsibilities:

Translate hardware designs into robust, scalable production processes, ensuring manufacturability, repeatability, and compliance with defence standards.
Develop and optimise production workflows, including tooling, fixtures, assembly methods, and test procedures.
Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for production issues, driving continuous improvement and reducing defects.
Collaborate closely with design engineering to influence early design decisions and ensure alignment with production capability.
Create and maintain manufacturing documentation, including build instructions, process specifications, PFMEAs, and control plans.
Support new product introduction (NPI) from prototype through to full rate production.
Ensure compliance with defence, safety, and quality regulations, including configuration control and traceability requirements.
Drive cost effective production solutions without compromising performance, reliability, or security.
Develop and manage CAPEX proposals, including ROI analysis and investment appraisal.
Perform engineering analysis to reduce test equipment and production assembly equipment downtime and outages.
Develop best practices to improve production capacity, quality and reliability.
Support purchasing with supplier management, process improvement and corrective action.
Assist with production staff training and the development of workmanship standards in both Mechanical and Electrical teams, identifying areas of improvement.

Skills & Experience Essential

Degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Manufacturing or Production Engineering (or equivalent experience)
Demonstrated experience leading NPI activities, including process development, prototyping, and transition to full-rate manufacturing.
Deep understanding of DFM/DFA principles, with demonstrated ability to embed manufacturability into early-stage design and industrialisation strategy.
Strong working knowledge of 3D CAD systems, with the ability to interrogate models for DFMA, tolerance analysis, and tooling development.
Demonstrated experience in the manufacture and integration of complex electro-mechanical systems, including PCB assemblies and precision mechanical components.
Working knowledge of defence and industry standards (e.g., IPC, MIL-STD) and their application within regulated manufacturing environments.
Experience driving continuous improvement initiatives focused on cost reduction, yield improvement, cycle time optimisation, and process capability enhancement.
Excellent communication skills and the ability to work cross functionally in a fast paced, regulated environment.
Experience supporting products through full lifecycle stages, from prototype and low-rate initial production (LRIP) through to full-rate manufacture.

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