What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Mechanical Design Engineer position at Alicat Scientific?
About Us
How do scientific questions get answered? How do new things get built? They always require people with a love of science or engineering who use building blocks to discover and create. Alicat Scientific has been manufacturing and servicing high quality mass flow and pressure devices since 1991, and we have grown every year for over 20 years. Each instrument is a custom-made building block that might be employed in support of space rockets, hydrogen fuel cells, medical oxygen delivery systems, environmental monitoring stations… or anywhere precision gas instruments can advance science and industry.
At Alicat, speed is embedded throughout our organization, including the instrument’s speed of response, our speed of product development, and our speed of customer support. We don’t believe in hierarchy or power by title, prefer principles over rules, and believe that people will notice if you make an impact. Our informal environment celebrates differences, whether as big as our diverse backgrounds or as small as our opinions of movies.
Job Summary
As a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Alicat Scientific, you’ll drive the entire product development lifecycle—from conceiving innovative flow solutions to guiding their fabrication and validation. In this high-level role, you’ll collaborate across teams and with external partners to design, prototype, and refine components using advanced 3D CAD and DFMEA principles. Your oversight of product configurations, manufacturing processes, and continuous improvement initiatives will ensure top-quality instrumentation that powers industries ranging from aerospace to healthcare. If you thrive on shaping next-generation mechanical products in a fast-paced, impact-driven environment, we’d love to have you on our team.
Essential Functions
- Develop innovative new flow measurement and control solutions (e.g., sensors, proportional valves, flow bodies, laminar flow elements, enclosures) to expand mechanical product offerings
- Lead design assignments that can be broad in scope, requiring creativity and innovative thinking
- Guide the design and fabrication of molded, welded, etched, stamped, machined, and extruded components
- Engage with external suppliers (such as machine shops, laser welders, chemical etch facilities, material vendors) to create design prototypes
- Conduct DFMEA and review designs for manufacturability
- Develop and interpret advanced 3D CAD designs using SolidWorks
- Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, and Engineering to gather design requirements
- Conduct design verification and validation testing for newly developed products
- Support product design and redesign, including initiating and assisting with ECNs (Engineering Change Notices)
- Plan and execute design-related tasks to maintain project timelines
- Support continuous improvement initiatives, especially those that impact product quality
- Plan and manage product test processes, collaborating with test engineers, manufacturing, and service teams to implement and validate these processes in production environments
- Perform other related duties as assigned
Qualifications – Education and Experience
What We Offer
A rewarding career where your level of impact is only limited by your ambition. There is no "red tape" to get in the way of you and others in the company making a difference. In addition to a competitive salary, you will enjoy exceptional healthcare, retirement 401k with up to a 5% employer match, bi-annual bonuses, and other work / life benefits. We offer parental leave (including paternal) of 14 weeks fully paid, flexible work schedules, and educational assistance. Got a hobby project you're tinkering away with that might make you a better engineer? We'll cover the costs associated with that since new capabilities ultimately make us a better group. You'll also expand your knowledge by closely collaborating with a tight-knit group of multi-discipline engineers.
