Senior Mechanical Engineer - Instrumentation Hardware

Responsibilities

- Design enclosures, heat sinks, shields, cabling, chassis, and front panels for rack-mount and pluggable instrumentation products

- Create and maintain detailed CAD models, assemblies, and drawings

- Perform thermal and airflow analysis to ensure components stay within operating temperature limits under real-world conditions

- Designing in sheet metal, extrusions, and machined parts as well as rapid prototyping (3D printing and other quick turn methods)

- Assist with connector and cable analysis and design; assess board and front panel space requirements and density, cable routing and restrictions, etc

- Conduct tolerance studies (GD&T-based) to ensure fit, function, and manufacturability across assemblies

- Collaborate with electrical engineers to integrate PCBs, power supplies, and wiring into mechanical packaging

- Support design reviews, prototyping, testing, and validation (thermal, structural, EMI/EMC as applicable)

- Work with manufacturing, suppliers, and operations to ensure designs transition smoothly from prototype to production

Experience & Education

- BS in Mechanical Engineering

- 5+ years of mechanical engineering design experience relatable to instrument design

Required Qualifications

- Proficiency with CAD and simulation tools; SolidWorks and Ansys (e.g., Icepak, Mechanical, Fluent) preferred, though familiarity with similar CAD/FEA/CFD tools will also be considered

- Experience working with mechanical fixtures for PCBs (supports, integration fixtures, multi-board design with FMC or other board-to-board mating interfaces, heat sinks, shields, connectors, etc)

- Solid understanding of thermal management for electronics: heat sink design, airflow/CFD analysis, and component-level cooling

- Mechanical drawing and GD&T per ASME Y14.5M, tolerance stack analysis

- Experience with sheet metal design, fabrication methods, and cable/harness design

- Ability to work cross-functionally with electrical and systems engineers to balance mechanical, thermal, and electrical constraints

- Robust packaging of sensitive systems for shipping or extreme environments

- Comfortable moving between early-stage concept work and detailed production-ready design

Desired Qualifications

- Familiarity with pluggable instrumentation standards such as MicroTCA, PXI, VPX, or similar and modular PCB form factors, such as FMC

- Experience with RF shielding, EMI/EMC design considerations

- Experience with electronics test fixture design

- Exposure to test & measurement or precision instrumentation products

- Experience supporting products through sustainment/value engineering after initial release

- Familiarity with PLM and PDM tools