Principal Engineer

About the role

As a principal engineer, you will play a key role in upholding engineering integrity, independence, and ethics across all projects and activities. You will provide technical leadership and guidance to the engineering team, ensuring adherence to high standards of safety, professionalism, and design practices. You will actively contribute to sales and marketing efforts by providing technical insights for business development. Travel will be required nationally and internationally to support on-site engineering activities and collaborate with global teams.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the structural design and development of heavily armoured and lightweight protected vehicles, including chassis, blast armour, driveline architecture, and mobility systems.
• Lead a team of engineers and technicians, ensuring project timelines and quality standards are met.
• Develop modular recovery systems for vehicle conversion, ensuring efficiency and compatibility with existing platforms.
• Innovate and integrate unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) technology into military and civilian applications.
• Conduct hand calculations and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to validate designs.
• Perform tolerance analysis, GD&T, and bolted joint design to ensure structural integrity.
• Provide mentorship and training in mechanical design, FEA, and armoured vehicle technologies.
• Utilize programming skills to enhance engineering data management and automation.
• Oversee metalwork and fabrication processes for prototyping and production.
• Engage with customers and stakeholders, building strong professional relationships and acting as the primary point of contact for technical discussions.

About you

• Strong background in vehicle design, including armored, unmanned, and multipurpose vehicles.
• Proven track record in providing technical leadership, mentoring, and supporting engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of engineering integrity and independence.
• Expertise in leading complex engineering activities.
• Excellent knowledge of design processes, with a focus on continuous improvement.
• Capable of managing multiple projects.
• Advanced skills in structural analysis, finite element analysis and GD&T.
• A safety-first mindset.
• Strong communication skills, able to work effectively with customers, stakeholders, and internal teams.

About us

We are a young technology business operating primarily in the Defence sector with a growing footprint in other sectors. Our core business is ultra-high mobility, wheeled vehicles and we are the OEM of a range of vehicles from 450kg to 12T GVM and currently in service with the Australian and NZ armies. We also apply our skills to other areas, such as working with defence primes on large programs and consulting into the automotive industry. We are a relatively small business to be doing all of this and that means we rely on all members of our team to be leaders; to work directly with our customers, to bring some industry insight and experience to proceedings, to form and lead teams and to get the job done.