A shared working table seen from above, covered in laptops and notes
11 Careers / Company

Come and make
something
heavy

Twenty-three roles open across six sites. Most of them involve hardware you can walk to, and a shop floor that will tell you when your design is a nuisance to build.

1,240 employees 27 % employee-owned Median tenure 6.4 years 4-day fortnight compressed option
Open roles

Currently hiring

Applications go to a named hiring manager, not a portal that swallows them. If we have not replied within ten working days, ring us and complain.

Eleven further roles are advertised internally first and will appear here in September. Speculative applications are read; the ones that get a reply are the ones that name a specific team.

Terms

What we actually offer
before you have to ask

Salary bands are published in every advert. We do not negotiate on the basis of your current pay and we will not ask what it is.

Ownership

Every permanent employee becomes a beneficiary of the employee trust after twelve months. It paid out in three of the last four years.

Hours

37 hours, with a compressed fortnight option that most of the design office takes. Test and production run shifts with a 22 % premium.

Leave

27 days plus bank holidays, rising to 32 with service. The Christmas shutdown is not taken from your allowance.

Development

Chartership support with paid study time, and a training budget held by your engineering manager rather than by HR.

Health

Private medical from day one including dependants, an on-site physiotherapist two days a week, and occupational health for shift workers.

Family

Six months at full pay for the primary carer, three months for the secondary, on the same terms regardless of who gave birth.

Getting there

Cycle scheme, a subsidised shuttle from Bristol Parkway, and EV charging at all six sites. Machrihanish also has a bus, twice a day.

Voice

Two elected staff representatives sit on the employee trust board, and the quarterly results meeting takes unfiltered questions from the floor.

Early careers

Graduates and
apprentices

Four graduate places a year and fourteen apprenticeships. Both are capped deliberately: we would rather take fewer people and supervise them properly than run a scheme that produces disappointed CVs.

  1. EC-01

    Graduate scheme

    Two years, four placements of six months, at least one of them on a shop floor or a test stand. You get a real deliverable on each, not a shadowing role. Salary £34,500 rising to £39,000 on completion.

  2. EC-02

    Apprenticeships

    Four-year advanced apprenticeships in machining, harness assembly, test and inspection, with day release to a local college. You are paid from day one and you own tools by the end of year two.

  3. EC-03

    Industrial placements

    Twelve-month placements for sandwich-course students, mostly in analysis and test. Roughly half come back to us as graduates, which is the point.

An engineer working at a desk with two monitors
Priya Raman Graduate engineer, second year

“My second placement was on bay 2 at Westcott. In week three I was the one holding the checklist during a hot-fire, which was terrifying and completely normal here. Nobody was standing over me, but three people were within shouting distance.”

Hiring process

Three stages,
no personality quiz

Typically three weeks end to end. We pay travel expenses for the on-site stage and we tell you the decision by phone, either way.

  1. 01

    A conversation

    Forty-five minutes with the hiring manager, about the work. No competency framework, no scoring grid. You should come out of it knowing what the job involves on a Wednesday afternoon.

  2. 02

    A technical session

    Two engineers, a real problem from a recent programme, and a whiteboard. We are looking at how you argue, not whether you remember a formula. Bring your own examples.

  3. 03

    A visit

    You come to the site, walk the floor, and talk to whoever you would be working with, without a manager present. Then we make an offer, or we do not, within two working days.

A group of colleagues in a meeting room
Applications

Nothing here fits?
Write to us anyway.

[email protected]

Tell us which team and what you would want to be doing in a year. That is more useful to us than a covering letter.