The role
03About the role As the composite technician on the Airframe team, your core mission is to prototype carbon structures fast, in-house — from mould to finished, quality-checked part — and to bring innovative solutions that make assembly and prototyping easier . A true hands-on professional, you combine technical skills, initiative, and a maker mindset. You build tooling, lay up and finish composite parts (carbon / glass fibre), and turn the engineers' CAD into flight-worthy structures on short cycles. You are also the owner of technical drawings and supplier quotations for the parts you handle, and the one who trains production operators when a design moves to series. You thrive with minimal supervision, favour pragmatic, quick-result approaches over perfect-but-slow tooling, and are equally comfortable laying up a part, machining or printing a mould, and reading a technical drawing.
01Rapid in-house prototyping (core)
02Produce carbon prototype structures quickly in-house, choosing the fastest viable route rather than heavy tooling when a proto is the goal.
03Propose innovative, simple solutions to speed up assembly and prototyping.
04Design certain parts and prototyping tools yourself (fixtures, adapters, simple structural parts) when it is faster than going through the design loop.
05Iterate fast with the design engineers: short loops between concept, part and feedback, flagging manufacturability issues before they cost a mould.
06Build and maintain moulds and tooling, in coordination with the design team; machine or 3D-print mould masters, prepare and polish mould surfaces.
07Design and build layup jigs, trimming templates, bonding and assembly fixtures.
08Manage the composite workshop consumables and material inventory (fabrics, resins, cores, vacuum consumables) including storage and shelf-life follow-up.
09Read and interpret 2D/3D drawings and ply books; model simple parts and tooling in CAD when needed; give manufacturability feedback early.
10Own the technical drawings: produce and keep up to date the manufacturing drawings for the parts and tooling you handle.
11Write and maintain clear, accessible fabrication procedures, ply books and cure logs on Confluence so processes are repeatable by others.
12Optimise part designs for their manufacturing process: adapt geometries for plastic injection (wall thickness, draft angles, ribs) or for composite / 3D-printed fabrication (layup feasibility, demoulding, printability), in collaboration with the design engineers.
13Support assembly and mechanical testing, including preparing test coupons and samples for structural analysis.
14Identify and propose process and quality improvements; help run the composite workshop safely (dust extraction, PPE, resin handling and waste management).
15Own the knowledge transfer to production: train the production operators on fabrication and assembly processes, and validate that a process is repeatable by others before handover.
