Stress Engineer

Rolls-Royce plc; Bristol; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000

Job description

*NB: First Stage telephone interviews will be held on the following dates: 14th-18th of April.

*Second stage Face to Face interviews : (TBC)*

An exciting opportunity has arisen within Rolls-Royce Bristol as they seek to recruit Mechanical Integrity Engineers to join the Team in support of a number of Defence Programmes, including New Product Introduction (NPI) and Mature Programmes.

Within Mechanical Integrity, there are three distinct disciplines: stress, critical parts lifing, and Structural Systems Design (SSD). Successful candidates would be aligned to the most appropriate role via the interview process.

• Stress Engineers ensure the integrity of our products. They predict the mechanical behaviour of components and sub-systems, supporting the Design function, taking into account various failure mechanisms (e.g. proof, ultimate, low & high cycle fatigue, creep etc.) and contributing factors (e.g. vibration, thermal induced loads, inherent manufacturing anomalies, corrosion, extreme operating conditions). The role of a Stress Engineer includes being influential at all stages in the design cycle (to ensure designs are robust, meet requirements and are optimised) through to the products service life and to component disposal.
• Critical Parts Lifing engineers manage the most safety-critical parts in operation throughout the product lifecycle. The role requires undertaking mechanical analyses and using statistical methods to develop and implement appropriate controls that maintain required safety levels. Their work supports design, manufacturing and maintenance activities as well as working directly with our customers to understand how they operate and ensure component lifing remains appropriate.
• The SSD department is where all the mechanical sub-systems of the engine are brought together and optimised into a full engine system. SSD engineers are responsible for understanding, modelling, analysing and post-processing results to define and influence the static, dynamic (rotordynamics, vibration and balancing) and extreme event (e.g. Fan Blade-Off) behaviour of the engine at a Product System level. This involves using analytical tools and methods ranging from hand calculations to complex design space exploration/optimisation. In the later stages of the design cycle, the role can include the correlation of engine test data (i.e. vibration) with the SSD analytical predictions. The typical tool used by SSD is the Whole Engine Mechanical Model (WEMM), which is a Finite Element (FE) model of the entire engine plus surrounding structures.

Why Rolls-Royce?

Rolls-Royce is one of the most enduring and iconic brands in the world and has been at the forefront of innovation for over a century. We design, build and service systems that provide critical power to customers where safety and reliability are paramount.

We are proud to be a force for progress, powering, protecting and connecting people everywhere.

We want to ensure that the excellence and ingenuity that has shaped our history continues into our future and we need people like you to come and join us on this journey.

These roles involve working with a range of key business stakeholders to support the delivery of key programme milestones thus enabling the delivery of our Defence Combat strategy for the next 50 years.

We’ll provide an environment of caring and belonging where you can be yourself. An inclusive, innovative culture that invests in you, gives you access to an incredible breadth and depth of opportunities where you can grow your career and make a difference.

What we offer

We offer excellent development opportunities, a competitive salary, and exceptional benefits. These include bonus, employee support assistance and employee discounts.

Your needs are as unique as you are. Hybrid working is a way in which our people could balance their time between the office, home, or another remote location. It’s a locally managed and flexed informal discretionary arrangement and is dependent on the security requirement of the role. As a minimum we’re all expected to attend the workplace for collaboration and other specific reasons, on average three days per week.

What you will be doing

In this exciting new role, you will have the opportunity to work across a wide variety of components and commodities with the responsibility of ensuring the integrity and the correct mechanical behaviour of our products by:

• Resolving problems through evaluative judgements, analysing factual information from multiple sources, interpreting results and identifying effective solutions by the application of technical knowledge, expertise and engineering judgement.
• Conducting mechanical experiments. This includes preparation of experiment specification for tests on test rigs and engines, supervision and support of experiments to ensure safe execution, plausibility check of results during the execution of the test, analysis and interpretation of test results, and comparison with analytical and/or empirical models.
• Conducting mechanical design and analysis; this includes the selection, generation and further development of numerical models, the use of numeral calculation methods, the development and implementation of interdisciplinary agreed boundary conditions into own models as well as into models of other disciplines (e.g. thermals, whole engine modelling, performance), the execution, verification and validation, and analysis of numerical model calculations, and actively promoting, encouraging and supporting the identification and implementation of continuous improvements to tools methods and processes.
• Being responsible for defined technical packages/investigations of work as part of a multi-discipline team, providing delivery against programme milestones within agreed cost, timescale, and quality requirements.

Who we are looking for

At Rolls-Royce we put safety first, do the right thing, keep it simple and make a difference. These principles form the behaviours that guide us and are an essential component of our assessment process. They are the fundamental qualities that we seek for all roles.

As a Stress Engineer, an appreciation of the importance of product integrity is considered essential. You will have the ability to apply logical, analytical and innovative thinking on a range of technical problems, to make balanced decisions across technical and business parameters, and to effectively communicate the method and results of complex analyses to peers, senior colleagues and external organisations such as customers or regulatory bodies. To be successful in this role you will need to have:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Engineering or a STEM subject (or regional equivalent qualification) and have experience in a relevant engineering environment (Mechanical, Aeronautical, Electrical or Controls). Other qualifications, in combination with relevant experience, may also be considered. A materials or mechanical analyst background and a strong interest in developing your career as a mechanical analyst. Membership of a relevant professional body attained/working towards Chartered status is preferred.
• Strong technical knowledge in mechanical design assessment methodologies (e.g. stress analysis both static and dynamic, fracture and fatigue assessment) with experience of, or a good appreciation of, finite element stressing techniques (e.g. ANSYS, ABAQUS, MSC Nastran, Altair) and complex testing (of assemblies, components, and materials).
• An understanding of material behaviour, crack propagation, contact, thermo-mechanical fatigue, and statistics.
• An understanding of cross-discipline engineering concepts which include but are not limited to manufacturing engineering, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, thermal and mechanical analysis, cost engineering and product definition.
• Experience of working with novel designs and problems with the ability to work outside established technical processes, developing these as needed throughout your work.
• Basic knowledge of bespoke coding tools for automation and data processing is desirable e.g. writing scripts in MATLAB, VBA or Python.

*To work for Rolls-Royce you may need to hold a Security Check (SC) clearance without any caveats to that clearance for some roles. Rolls-Royce will support the application for Security Clearance if you don’t currently have this in place. Due to the nature of work the business conducts and the protection of certain assets, for some roles you must hold a UK nationality.*

We are an equal opportunities employer. We’re committed to developing a diverse workforce and an inclusive working environment. We believe that people from different backgrounds and cultures give us different perspectives which are crucial to innovation and problem solving. We believe the more diverse perspectives we have, the more successful we’ll be. By building a culture of caring and belonging, we give everyone who works here the opportunity to realise their full potential.

We welcome applications from people with a refugee background.

Rolls-Royce pioneers cutting-edge technologies that deliver the cleanest, safest and most competitive solutions to our planet’s vital power needs.