Senior Manufacturing Engineer

About GKN Aerospace

A great place to work needs a great way of working; support us making GKN the trusted and most sustainable partner in the sky for our customers.
A Truly Global Business 
Every day, around the world, we help aircrafts fly further, faster and greener.  We’re the world’s leading tier one aerospace supplier of systems and components. With over 15,000 employees across 38 manufacturing sites in 13 countries serving over 90% of the world’s aircraft and engine manufacturers with sales of £2.8bn. Together as “one GKN” we’re moving our business and industry forward developing technologies that rapidly decarbonise aircraft, and innovating to help build a new generation of planes that produce zero emissions.  We’re putting sustainability at the heart of what we do; driving our objective to becoming a net zero greenhouse gas emissions business before 2050! 
Making a Difference 
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 400+ employees and onsite facilities including onsite parking, canteen, vending machines and showers.
 
 

Job Summary

The Senior Manufacturing Engineer will be based at our Luton site with occasional travel to our other sites and customers. The Senior Manufacturing Engineer will report to the site Manufacturing Engineering Manager for Canopies, Defence and will lead projects to resolve key manufacturing and process control issues to ensure improvements in product quality and process capability. The Senior Manufacturing Engineer will support the selection of projects through their analysis and understanding of a sites’ key issues and opportunities and will then manage the projects, using a data driven, structured problem solving approach and good project management skills, through to demonstrated improvement.    

Job Responsibilities

• Exemplify a safety-first mind-set and ensuring compliance with the GKN Aerospace Health, Safety and Environmental policies and standards
• Supporting production to resolve technical issues
• Creating and maintaining production technical documentation including enacting a robust change management process   
• Supporting a number of manufacturing processes including analysing yield, creating control charts and identifying continuous improvement opportunities    
• Managing a number of concurrent data driven improvement projects to make improvements in yield / process capability 
• Supporting our customer facing colleagues to resolve any technical issues and identify improvement opportunities with our customers
• Develop positive relationships with site teams and other stakeholders and proactively support identification and resolution of key site issues with product quality and process capability  
• Collaborate with site Manufacturing Engineering, Design Engineering, Quality & Operations teams in the understanding of opportunities, collection of data and execution of projects 
• Collaborate with other Senior Manufacturing Engineers based at the other Defence Europe sites

How You'll Contibute

To help us make a difference, you’ll bring your passion and talent for what you do along with the following skills, experience, qualifications and attributes:
Essential:

• Demonstrable experience gained from a Manufacturing Engineer role within a manufacturing environment
• Engineering, Materials Science or other Science focused Bachelor’s degree or equivalent international qualification 
• Strong data driven structured problem solving skills i.e. experience in use of DMAIC or 8D or other structured problem solving methodologies
• Experience of managing projects using structured approach 
• Experience of driving process improvement
• Experience of statistical analysis and process control
• Intermediate competency with Microsoft software including Word, Excel and Outlook

Desirable:

• Aerospace, Pharmaceutical or Automotive manufacturing experience
• New product introduction experience including working to international standards i.e. AS9145 APQP & PPAP
• Experience with automation, composite lay-up, coatings, tooling design or cleanrooms 
• Green Belt / Black Belt Six Sigma qualification
• Experience with equipment capital expenditure projects 
• Experience with SAP

We are looking for people who want to make a difference, talented members with the skills and passions to become the best of the future in what they do. The Senior Manufacturing Engineer will be proactive, a self-starter with the ability to work with ambiguity with excellent problem solving skills. The successful person will have exceptional people skills including excellent communication and the ability to work across all the levels of the organisation (from shop floor to site director).
 

What We'll Offer

Once you’re on board you’ll get the following perks and benefits:
 

• £36,292 to £45,365 per annum dependent on experience
• Industry Leading Pension Scheme = we’ll match your contributions up to 8% on a 1 : 1.5 basis
• Life Assurance 8 x salary
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Opportunity to earn up to 15% bonus 
• Income protection
• Shopping discounts
• Cycle To Work Scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme
• A collaborative, dynamic working environment 

As well as a competitive package we’ll offer you a world of opportunity. We want to see your career fly!  We’ll support your career progression by providing you with learning and development opportunities.  That’s the beauty of being part of a global business, once you’re on board you never know where you career journey may take you! 

Why Join Us

A Great Place to work needs a Great Way of Working
Everyone is welcome to apply to GKN.  Through our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging and by living our five powerful principles we’ve created a culture where everyone feels welcome to contribute.  It’s a culture that won us ‘The Best Workplace Culture Award’ 2021 and this year we have been named among the best places to work in the UK by job comparison website Breakroom.  By embracing and celebrating what makes us unique we encourage everyone to bring their full self to work. We’re also committed to providing an accessible recruitment process, so if you require reasonable adjustments at any stage during our recruitment process please get in touch and let us know.
 

Join us and keep the world moving … click on the link below to apply

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