Graduate Mechanical Engineer - Graduate Scheme 2025

The salary for this role is £32,729.

This role requires employees to complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS), including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions.

UKAEA’s two-year graduate scheme is split by 80% of your time developing both your general work-related skills and professional qualifications and 20% of your working time dedicated to graduate training and development.  Within the graduate training and development, there is a core suite of activities designed to develop your professional and business skills. Elements of this programme are flexible and can be tailored to your personal development needs and to those of your specific job role. 

The Role

Are you looking for an exciting opportunity to make a difference? Join our team and contribute to the future of fusion energy. As a Graduate Mechanical Engineer within the Integrated Engineering Division, you will play a pivotal role in performing a variety of engineering tasks designed to provide experience & familiarization with staff, methods, practices, & programs of the organisation. The role holder will be expected to manage their own development continuously working towards building their knowledge & skills.

The Integrated Engineering Division has opportunities for Graduate Mechanical Engineers to join teams specialising in the following areas:

• Mechanical Design
• Mechanical Project Engineering
• Analysis and Qualification
• Mechanical Engineering for fusion specialist components
• Magnet Engineering

The Integrated Engineering Division provides Mechanical Engineering capabilities to the majority of UKAEA programmes, including the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP); Materials Research Facility (MRF); Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak – Upgrade (MAST-U); Fusion Technology Facilities (FTF); JET Decommissioning and Repurposing (JDR); Hydrogen-3 Advanced Technologies (H3AT); and various rigs and test facilities.

Supported by experienced engineering and project management staff, you will develop skills and knowledge on the job through various roles on many of these programmes (~3-6 month rotations), which could include the following activities:

• Concept and design development
• Analysis and qualification
• Procurement and manufacture
• Product realisation and testing

Additional Responsibilities:

These are dependent on the team you join on the placement.

• Computer Aided Design (CAD)
• Finite Element Analysis (FEA) or Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) or other Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools
• Magnet and cryogenic system design, manufacture and test
• Project management
• Operations and/or repair & recovery of existing equipment
• Welding inspection and standard compliance
• Management of discrete packages of work

Essential Requirements:

• Recognised suitable engineering degree 
• Demonstrates a good understanding of engineering principles and how they a can be applied. 

A full list of our benefits can be found here https://careers.ukaea.uk/life-at-ukaea/employee-benefits/

We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly individuals from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities, and women. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) Partner and Inclusion Ambassadors, actively promotes EDI and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.

Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.