Postgraduate engineer - Quality Assurance/Compliance Engineer

The theoretical knowledge to solve problems in existing and emerging technologies, applying and developing analytical techniques

Understanding of business and commercial needs/constraints

Knowledge and understanding of own competencies capabilities and limitations, ability to work within these and highlight when work goes outside of these

Understanding of financial responsibilities and authorisation processes

Understanding of technical sign off responsibilities, who within their organisation needs to be involved in the sign off of product/processes

Understand all relevant regulations and guidelines in relation to the decommissioning of products or processes

Understand the health, safety and environmental requirements of the decommissioning process

Understand the requirements and limitations (Customer, environmental, safety, cost, timescale), and how to propose design and development solutions that best address these

Understand design concepts and principles relating to the development of products, services and specifications

Understand the principles of risk management and how lessons learnt can be implemented to ensure project risk is recognised and minimised through the project life cycle

Understand all internal processes, regulatory requirements in order to meet customers’ requirements

Understand the operating principles and limitations of equipment under maintenance/test

Understand how to produce maintenance/test schedules for both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance/test activities

Understand manufacturing engineering production methods and quality issues relating to the manufacture of products

Understand manufacturing engineering requirements, such as Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (PFMEA)

Understand the product being assessed for repair using available technical data and support from subject matter experts as appropriate.

Understand legislative and regulatory requirements relating to the product

Understand, in-depth the legal and regulatory requirements and the responsibilities of all those involved in the product lifecycle

Understand Safety Management Systems (SMS) as applied to the business

Understand the unpredictability of research projects and the need to adapt and adjust daily planning needs to accommodate new developments.

Understand how to analyse and interpret data, both quantitative and qualitative, in order to inform research and development decisions/strategies

Understand the implications of non-compliance and the impact this will have on a business and/or environment.

Understand how to investigate, implement and evaluate new product introduction (NPI) strategies.

Understand systems architecture, design installations, including material applications and systems methodology as applicable

Understand the applications of diagnostic methods, monitoring and test equipment required for systems integration

Have sufficient knowledge of product regulatory compliance and how to test for compliance on safety and all regulatory requirements

Understand environmental test and the effects of forces and conditions on the performance and reliability of the product

Safe working practices, an understanding of technical governance and quality management

Compliance with legislation and codes, but be able to seek improvements

Practical competence to deliver innovative products and services

Technical responsibility for complex engineering systems

Accountability for project(s)/programme(s), finance and personnel management

Management of trade-offs between technical and socio-economic factors

The skill sets necessary to develop other technical staff

Obtain accurate details for engineering products or processes to be decommissioned and review engineering their decommissioning requirements

Identify decommissioning options for products or processes ensuring that they comply with all relevant regulations and guidelines and conditions are suitable to implement these

Identify the health, safety and environmental requirements of the decommissioning process

Specify decommissioning methods and procedures to be implemented

Plan and manage the decommissioning of engineering product or process

Identify potential decommissioning risks and produce associated contingency plans and solve decommissioning problems that occur

Assess and evaluate the results/outcomes of the decommissioning of engineering products or processes and ensure lessons learnt re incorporated into future processes

Recommend engineering products or processes for decommissioning and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of decommissioning these

Advise colleagues and stakeholders on current decommissioning information, providing advice and guidance as necessary

Verify the decommissioned status of the engineering product or process

Design and develop solutions to common or well-articulated engineering situations, problems, issues and working as part of a team apply engineering design concepts and principles to develop products, services and specifications

Validate that the design will satisfy the requirements of the product or service

Provide design and development inputs to resolve technical & performance issues, problems for a platform, product or service

Make trade-offs between requirements (Customer, environmental, safety, cost, timescale) and articulate the impact of these

Support and/or perform cost / benefit analysis for all options proposed depending on the complexity of the product or service

Critique own and others design proposals

Plan and review the outcome of the design and development activities and action changes to recover where outcomes are not as predicted

Improve designs, solutions and processes through experimenting, incorporating user feedback and working with others to seek out improvement ideas

Interpret the systems architecture, design installations, including material applications and methods as applicable

Ensure that engineering integrity is achieved, engineering procedures are complied with

Co-ordinate a cross functional and multidiscipline engineering team to deliver all work packages within time and cost budgets to required quality on assigned programs

Develop a strong and positive technical relationship with all internal and external customers.

Effectively manage resource to achieve plans and to drive improvements to enhance productivity

Inject knowledge and expertise to the team and customer to ensure robust and timely solutions are developed for technical and programme issues.

Ensure rigorous application of risk management and lessons learnt to ensure project risk is understood and minimised through the project life cycle.

Ensure all internal process, regulatory and customer requirements are met.

Lead the engineering technical/manufacturing team to ensure that lessons learnt are addressed and a robust trouble free product is developed

Ensure that product strategies are in place to provide discriminating technologies for future products if appropriate

Monitor, organise and perform the maintenance activities to minimise the down time of the equipment and/or components

Ensure the equipment and/or components perform within operational standards, using approved data and techniques

Ensure all the specific safety precautions and procedures are observed during the course of the test/maintenance activity including isolation of other systems as necessary to protect themselves, others and the equipment

Ensure that all maintenance and repair activities are performed in a safe manner which will lead to the reinstatement of the system/equipment/component to its functional condition

Obtain, specify, write and use the appropriate documentation required to support maintenance and test.

Ensure serviceable and appropriate spares, tooling and equipment are available to support scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities

Ensure instances where maintenance activities cannot be fully met are reported so that limitations on the release of the system/equipment/component for continued use can be determined.

Dispose of all waste materials in accordance with safe working practices, approved procedures and environmental requirements

Demonstrate technical competence to develop and lead the implementation of continuous improvement activities at all stages of the manufacturing/production process

Ensure that the full design intent is accurately converted into clear manufacturing instructions.

Ensure the engineering integrity of bills of material (BOM) and configuration control are maintained

Act as the focal point for manufacturing engineering and quality issues relating to the manufacture of product

Develop and deploy performance and process metrics which are consistent across the production groups.

Compile programme schedules for a defined production area and assist with the definition of tooling/process requirements for the introduction of new and existing products.

Be responsible for the introduction of new products, and/or modifications to existing product manufacture and its associated tooling

Use and apply the manufacturing engineering requirements, such as Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (PFMEA)

Assume technical authorship of defined manufacturing engineering and business processes, and associated procedures

Generate reports to demonstrate impact of all production/process modifications implemented to include, improvements in yield and cycle time

Ensure the impacts on cost, quality, programme and risk targets are understood in the implementation of new production processes

Assess the product to be repaired using available technical data and support from subject matter experts as appropriate.

Interpret technical product data and communicate this effectively to customers and operators at the appropriate level

Apply diagnostic analysis, tools and techniques in a logical manner and provide options and solutions

Utilise software analytics in the diagnostic process and provide customer / operator feed back

Produce reports to inform reliability and maintainability processes and product reliability analysis

Establish clear and precise criteria for assuring the quality of engineering products or processes, defining audit and monitoring processes

Ensure that the specified quality assurance methods and procedures are implemented correctly, upholding the safety and quality culture within the organisation

Obtain accurate information from valid sources on the engineering product or process being quality assured obtain accurate information from valid sources on the engineering product or process being quality assured

Assess accurately the quality of the engineering products or processes and produce detailed reports

Ensure that information on quality is recorded and provided to the appropriate people

Recommend improvements to quality product and processes to the appropriate people

Carry out interviews for post holder or nominated positions

Manage audits on vendor organisations

Adapt and adjust daily planning needs to accommodate new developments as a result of the unpredictability of research projects.

Analyse and record data to aid the design of future research and produce useful findings for other academics, funders, policy makers and practitioners.

Prepare materials (work piece, tooling, fixtures, etc.) such as set up equipment for experiments, carry out research, run samples and experiments, and interpret results to obtain data for research.

Contribute to research by acquiring and interpreting research data, ensuring that the methodology and purpose are defined in advance and contribute to the development of new techniques, models and methods.

Undertake research, collate, organise and edit material for inclusion in reports and other documents, ensuring that data results are presented in a professional and concise manner.

Plan and allocate work and responsibilities over the short-medium term, with an awareness of longer term issues.

Plan in advance to meet details for project reports, journal publications and to support presentations and papers for conferences.

Ensure that the requirements defined within the technical specifications for suppliers are achievable

Investigate the implications of non-compliance and ensure impact assessments are undertaken and recovery actions plans are established.

Identify opportunities for process improvement, waste elimination and cost reduction across the supply chain

Provide technical support to the supplier

Provide technical support and advice to internal stakeholders and support sourcing decisions, commodity teams planning and provide the supplier point of view in reviews internally

manage supplier technical relationships to ensure projects are delivered on time and proactive risk management is in place and risk.

Work with the supply chain team to understand capabilities, capacities and commitments and agree appropriate timescales for transfers based on these

Manage supplier design data queries and change requests.

Support new product introduction (NPI) strategies and transfer plans through NPI program life from a technical engineering perspective.

Monitor, test and use diagnostic methods required to support integration

Identify issues with system integration, test environment and design proving problems present at the design phase of products

Identify possible opportunities for improving systems practices, processes and/or procedures take the technical lead to identify and implement solutions to complex system problems

Create integration architecture deliverables working in conjunction with business projects, translating user requirements to solutions

Work with manufacturing specialists to ensure design can translate to manufacturing processes and systems

Develop formal test plans to ensure test requirements are achieved

Ensure that the capabilities of current test facilities is clearly understood to be able to determine the ability of the test equipment to support the testing requirements (including calibration and measurement uncertainty)

Determine the tests required to support and inform reliability predictions

Be conversant with product and development life cycles and how test fits into and supports the broader development and manufacturing environment

Be conversant with national and international standards relevant to test development and test execution in both the civil and military environments as appropriate

Be able to accurately and impartially observe, record and provide accurate and impartial technical reports, project progress reports, test data analysis and metrics

Liaise with internal and external customers to provide technical guidance on test specifications, standards and results.

Provide technically effective and cost effective test proposals and solutions to product development, production and product customer(s) where applicable

Knowledge and understanding: Demonstrating commitment to continue personal development, refreshing and expanding Engineering knowledge keeping up-to-date with emerging technologies

Design and development of processes, systems, services and products: Contributing proactively to the continuing development of Engineering within their domain

Responsibility, management or leadership: Taking personal responsibility for their actions, managing projects, including resource management within their remit and able to mentor and instruct others in associated standards and best practice

Communication and inter-personal skills: Being able to demonstrate a range of communication styles and methods. Understanding the importance of networks within and across functions, handling conflict, giving and using feedback effectively. Able to understand the different needs for business relationships and their associated communication requirements.

Professional commitment: Demonstrating a personal, ethical and professional commitment to society, their profession and the environment, adopting a set of values and behaviours that will maintain and enhance the reputation of the profession as well as their organisation and fulfilling requirements with respect to maintenance of personal records for Professional Registration.