Jobs

R&D Engineer

Salary: £36,000-£40,000 FTE depending on experience.

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Start Date: From March 2026 (flexible)

Description

Have you ever wanted to work in a small team of highly committed individuals to deliver a state-of-the-art product? Would you be excited to design and manufacture components to be used at temperatures close to absolute zero in a cutting-edge research application? Does the informal and exciting environment of a small company appeal to you?

We are looking for a new engineer to join our team.

The role will be to develop and test new products and will involve working alone or as part of a small team. For the past 10 years Razorbill Instruments products have been used by physics researchers across the globe to understand the fundamental properties of materials such as superconductors. As scientists continue to develop ever more sophisticated experiments, engineers at Razorbill Instruments develop the technologies they need to carry out these experiments in some of the most extreme environments imaginable.

We are looking for an enthusiastic engineer with a passion for technology and working in a small but growing business. Because of the very small team, the role will be relatively broad and the nature of a business means that you will need to be flexible and occasionally you will be asked to pitch in on other projects. The job will mainly consist of design, prototyping and development of new products or customer one-offs and modifications, with potential to see projects progress right through from inception to off-the-shelf product. Although predominantly R&D, the job may also involve supply chain development, quality control, or routine manufacturing and assembly when the need arises.

Examples of things you might do:

  • Design a modification to our existing products to fit specific customer requirements.
  • Do pen-and-paper calculations and FEA to ensure your new design remains within material limitations.
  • Design a testing rig and then run tests on prototypes of new products you’ve designed.
  • Help run our cryostat and/or furnace.
  • Talk to production team to make design tweaks to help the products go together more consistently.
  • Join the conversation to decide what future products we might develop.
  • Do a post-mortem on returned devices to see why they failed and consider how the fault can be prevented.
  • Work together with more senior engineers and academic collaborators on our longer running and highly technically challenging projects.

If this job appeals to you, please send a CV and a cover letter to jobs@razorbillinstruments.com. In your cover letter please explain how your previous qualifications and experience allow you to meet our listed requirements and as many of the bullet-pointed desirable qualities you can. If you can supply more detail than your CV on the relevant points, that would be great!

We anticipate advertising this job until 12th March but may close sooner Friday 6th March.

Qualifications

We would expect candidates to have first or upper second MEng Mechanical Engineering degree (or closely related degree).
We would also consider applications from candidates with a broader range of degrees or entirely vocational/industry career pathway. Let us know why you’d be a great fit for the role in your cover letter.

Requirements

  • Desire to work in a small team on a highly technical scientific product.
  • Experience with 3D CAD software, e.g. SolidWorks, SolidEdge, Inventor
  • Someone with a ‘hands on’ approach, who brings imagination to solving engineering problems
  • Independent worker who can manage their time and set and keep deadlines
  • Attention to detail
  • Must have the right to live and work in the UK

Desirable Qualities

A good candidate may have 2 or more of the following and a desire to learn the rest!

  • Experience in design for manufacture: i Particularly low-volume manufacturing techniques such as 5-axis CNC and wire EDM.
  • Experience in finite element analysis
  • Experience in a laboratory or R&D environment
  • A few years of relevant industry experience.
  • Programming experience in C and/or python, or transferable programming skills from other languages
  • Experience of processing and presenting data
  • Some knowledge of electronic design

Hours

A full-time role would be 37.5 hours per week. We will also welcome candidates requesting the role being made part-time, and can accommodate other reasonable requests – for example matching the role to the school term.

By mutual agreement there can be some flexibility on working times.

This will be a relatively hands-on job, based in the office or lab, but some working from home may be possible once you’ve settled in.

Perks/terms

Holiday allowance is 6 weeks per year (including bank holidays)

  • Company pension contributions, with flexible salary sacrifice.
  • Flexible working
  • Competitive maternity policy
  • Casual working environment
  • Cycle to work scheme
  • Profit share bonus