At Quest Global, it’s not just what we do but how and why we do it that makes us different. With over 25 years as an engineering services provider, we believe in the power of doing things differently to make the impossible possible. Our people are driven by the desire to make the world a better place—to make a positive difference that contributes to a brighter future. We bring together technologies and industries, alongside the contributions of diverse individuals who are empowered by an intentional workplace culture, to solve problems better and faster.
A Principal Advance/Manufacturing Engineer plays a crucial role in the Aerospace and Defence industry, leading the development and optimisation of manufacturing systems, processes, and methodologies to enable robust, efficient and scalable production. This role translates engineering designs into manufacturable solutions, driving industrialisation from concept through to production readiness, validation, and continuous improvement. The position ensures alignment to cost, schedule, quality, and certification requirements while influencing design for manufacture and supply chain capability. At Quest Global, we are seeking a highly experienced engineer to join our team and provide technical leadership across complex manufacturing challenges.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide leadership and line management to the team, coordinating and overseeing their workloads, providing support to ensure that the team delivers, monitoring any issues, and ensuring timescales, KPIs and deadlines are met to meet the requirements of the customer.
- Champion quality deliverables for Manufacturing as well as continuous improvements included within your owned delivery stream.
- Develop the team by focusing on individual performance and support requirements to achieve high standards.
- Own and govern make-versus-buy strategy across programmes, ensuring alignment to capability, cost, risk, and long‑term business objectives.
- Act as the final manufacturing authority at design gates (PDR, CDR, release).
- Define manufacturing strategy for complex systems (e.g. gearboxes, rotating equipment, precision machined assemblies).
- Define and approve supplier capability frameworks for critical manufacturing processes.
- Set DFM standards and governance frameworks across engineering programmes.
- Govern PFMEA, control plans, and industrialisation frameworks to ensure consistency and robustness.
- Ensure alignment to regulated standards (AS9100, ISO 9001, NADCAP, defence standards).
- Oversee PPAP / FAIR / production readiness approvals for critical components.
- Ensure manufacturing processes, tooling, and inspection methods are validated prior to release.
- Mentor and provide technical leadership to Senior and Manufacturing Engineers.
- Support programme leadership with evidence‑based decision making on manufacturing risks and trade‑offs.
- Lead root cause and systemic issue resolution for complex manufacturing challenges.
- Act independently at the organisational level, being self‑supervising, within guidance and expectations of customers.
- Contribute to the creation and implementation of best practice manufacturing engineering vision, strategy, policies, processes and procedures to aid and improve operational performance.
- Ability to capture and specify the requirements General and Task Management.
- Lead on complex major projects requiring forefront‑of‑the‑field, innovative, original solutions, provide technical expertise to the team.
- Make independent decisions on issues, providing expert technical support within Manufacturing Engineering.
- You shall be able to lead projects in a multi‑discipline environment and be capable or coordinating all manufacturing engineering, with the other disciplines, Process, transmission systems, Gears, Gear box and Marine engineering.
- Strive for continuous improvement and drive your area of delivery autonomously, with particular focus manufacturing engineering and advanced manufacturing.
Required Skills (Technical Competency)
- Analyse and manage multiple manufacturing related issues to identify root cause
- Write reports and present progress at project meetings and to clients
- Result oriented. You are only satisfied after your manufacturing engineering solutions are accepted by the client, you deliver top quality and the client is very satisfied with the performance of you and your team
- You have pleasure in teaching and coaching the young generation manufacturing engineers
- Supplier development and audit leadership
- Full lifecycle NPI / industrialisation ownership
- Experience with: PFMEA, APQP, PPAP, FAIR, MRR
- Regulated supply chains (AS9100, NADCAP, ISO 9001)
- Knowledge of – Gear manufacturing, rotating equipment, or power transmission systems
- Operates as a technical authority and decision‑maker, not just a contributor
- Demonstrates strong judgement under uncertainty and risk
- Challenges constructively and influences at senior stakeholder level
- Drives standardisation, governance, and continuous improvement at scale
Requirements
- Bachelor’s/master’s degree in engineering or a related field.
- Previous experience in a similar role within the Aerospace and Defence industry.
- Preferably a Chartered Engineer.
- Experience in heavy engineering industry, power transmission systems, gears and gear box
- Strong knowledge of quality management systems and industry standards (e.g., AS9100, ISO 9001)
- Strong knowledge of quality management systems and standards.
- Proficient in root cause analysis and failure mode analysis techniques.
- Excellent problem‑solving and analytical skills.
- Detail‑oriented with a strong focus on team, quality and continuous improvement.
- Effective communication and interpersonal skills.
Due to security requirements these posts are open to SOLE UK NATIONALS ONLY
If you are a dedicated and proactive professional with a passion for ensuring quality and driving continuous improvement, we would love to hear from you. Join our team at Quest Global as a Principal Advance/Manufacturing Engineer and contribute to the success of our Aerospace and Defence projects. Apply now!
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