It’s great to know you’re making a difference to the future of aviation! Whatever part you play you’ll be helping us deliver operational excellence to our customers. Based at our Luton manufacturing plant you’ll do just that. Established in 1993, GKN Aerospace in Luton is a world leader in commercial and military ice protection systems and transparencies. Offering a full range of capabilities; design, analysis, testing, certification and manufacture of electro-thermal ice protection, military fast jet canopies and flight deck windows to over 20 programmes including: Boeing 787, Dreamliner, Airbus A320, AgustaWestland, AW101, Eurofighter Typhoon and Lockheed, Martin F-22 Raptor. Our customers include Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Bell Helicopters, Textron, BAE Systems, Pratt & Whitney, Leonardo. Our Luton site is home to 370+ employees and onsite facilities including onsite parking, food hub and vending machines.
As a Senior Systems Engineer (Electronics) you will draw on your diverse engineering background and the product lifecycle awareness to work on a variety of research activities in the TRL1-6 range. You must have sound experience in leading technical work, including budgeting, schedule and risk management. You will be capable of achieving through others internally and externally, and you will be committed to development of your own skills and professional network. Your proactive nature will enable you to understand and adapt to new technology areas quickly.
The Luton team is focussed on developing product and manufacturing process technology related to aircraft ice protection systems and specialist structures for both civil and defence applications. The areas of activity cover but is not limited to: Electro-thermal systems and Electro-mechanical systems, Specialist materials and coating systems, Embedded and structural composites, Aircraft transparencies, Icing modelling and analysis, Sensing and data acquisition, Electrical and software control systems and digital engineering / manufacturing.
This role is to provide analysis and design data to support ice protection system design through modelling and simulation of in-flight icing behaviour of aircraft surfaces, or representative surfaces. It is further expected that the role holder develop an in-depth understanding of the icing wind tunnel facility capabilities, and provide consultation and support to customers and other third party users ensuring testing is conducted in line with relevant standards and specifications and contributing to test reports as required.
This expertise is to be developed through understanding icing physics and aircraft ice protection philosophies (particularly electrothermal), and through practical experimentation and modelling verification using the research icing wind tunnel. The successful candidate should have a broad engineering knowledge base but have a desire to specialise and in time develop the in depth knowledge to become a subject matter expert in icing analysis and testing, being able to support next generation ice protection system designs.
We are seeking someone adaptable in their approach to work, and be willing to understudy other team members in their areas of expertise to ensure project objectives are met. As a Senior Systems Engineer (Electronics), you will be naturally curious and seek to increase/deepen your own technical knowledge through study, collaborative working, hypothesis testing and experimentation.
Core operational hours at our Luton site are: 07:30 - 16:30 Monday to Thursday & 07:30 - 12:30 Friday. The role requires flexibility for occassional national travel to meet with customer and we offer the opportunity to work from home up to two days per week dependent on business need.
