DigitalCNC
CAM Integration and Partner Engineer
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
About DigitalCNC
DigitalCNC is a University of Sheffield AMRC spinout building a deterministic, physics-based machining prediction engine delivered natively inside the CAM systems machinists already use, including Siemens NX, CATIA V5 and Mastercam. Built on approximately 25 years of AMRC machining research, our technology lets CAM programmers see how a machine tool will actually behave before a single chip is cut, producing toolpaths that are machine-specific and optimised at the point of design.
We sell directly to aerospace and defence OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, and we are building OEM partnerships that will embed our engine inside established digital machining products. This role sits at the centre of both.
The Role
This is a dual-mandate engineering role. You will own the integration layer that connects our prediction engine to the CAM systems our customers use, and you will own the engineering side of our OEM partnerships, where established software vendors embed our engine inside their own products.
These are two faces of the same technical problem: presenting a physics engine to a host application through a clean, stable, well-documented boundary. In our own plugins, you control both sides of that boundary. In a partner integration, engineers at another company build against it, which raises the bar on interface design, versioning, documentation and support.
You will work closely with the VP Engineering on the component architecture and with our R&D engineers day to day, testing what is feasible in the engine and shaping how its capability is exposed. You will also work closely with our field engineer, who uses the software intensively at customer sites and acts as your in-house end user, so that what ships reflects how CAM programmers actually work.
User experience is paramount in this role. Our promise to customers is machining physics without the complexity: no specialist controller training, results in around five clicks, inside the CAM environment they already know. Every integration decision you make either protects that simplicity or erodes it. The hardest part of this job is not connecting the engine to a host application, it is doing so in a way that a busy CAM programmer finds obvious.
As partnerships mature, you will be the named technical contact our partners rely on. This role suits an engineer who enjoys the boundary between deep domain software and the people who consume it: someone who takes pride in an API another engineer can pick up in a morning, and an interface a CAM programmer never has to think about.
What You Will Do
CAM Plugin Development
- Design, build and maintain DigitalCNC's native integrations for Siemens NX, CATIA V5 and Mastercam, covering toolpath extraction, machine and controller context, and the presentation of prediction results inside the CAM environment
- Own the end-user experience of the integrated product: workflows measured in clicks, results presented where the CAM programmer already looks, and complexity kept inside the engine rather than pushed onto the user
- Work with the R&D team to establish what is feasible in the engine and translate that capability into simple, dependable user-facing workflows
- Iterate with the field engineer as a demanding in-house end user, using feedback from customer trials to simplify relentlessly
- Own the plugin release process across host CAM versions, managing the compatibility matrix as CAM vendors update their own APIs
- Work with the field engineer and customers during Proof of Value trials to resolve integration issues quickly and feed improvements back into the plugin architecture
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Partner Integration Engineering
- Own the engine's external integration boundary: a versioned, documented API/SDK that partner engineers build against, designed with the VP Engineering and CTO
- Produce and maintain partner-facing technical material: SDK reference documentation, integration guides, worked sample code and a partner sandbox with evaluation licences and benchmark cases
- Act as the named technical contact for partner engineering teams during evaluation, integration and post-launch support, working to defined response targets
- Run the technical side of partner onboarding, including integration workshops and joint debugging sessions
- Maintain the regression suite covering partner-consumed interfaces, so every release ships with evidence that the boundary still holds
Architecture and Engineering Practice
- Contribute to the separation of engine and integration layers so the engine remains a cleanly embeddable component
- Help establish and uphold release engineering practice: semantic versioning, backwards compatibility policy, deprecation notices and release notes suitable for external consumption
- Follow the company's information handling protocols in all partner communications, given the commercially sensitive relationships in our ecosystem
What We Are Looking For
Essential
- Strong software engineering background in C++ and/or C# in a commercial product environment
- Experience developing against at least one major CAM, CAD or PLM platform API, such as NX Open, CAA/CATIA automation, the Mastercam API (NET-Hook/C-Hook) or comparable
- Experience designing, documenting or maintaining APIs or SDKs consumed by engineers outside your own team
- Understanding of CAM fundamentals: toolpath structures, post-processing, and how CAM output relates to what a machine tool actually executes
- Demonstrable care for end-user experience in technical software: evidence of simplifying workflows, reducing steps or hiding complexity for non-specialist users
- Disciplined engineering habits: version control, automated testing, code review and an instinct for backwards compatibility
- A willingness to embrace AI tools and emerging technologies to improve efficiency, support day-to-day work, and enhance the quality of outcomes
- Clear written and verbal communication, comfortable working directly with external engineering teams
- Right to work in the UK
Desirable
- Experience integrating or embedding third-party engines, kernels or components into a host application, on either side of that relationship
- Familiarity with machining simulation, verification or optimisation software
- Exposure to NC program structure and controller behaviour, including how header, tolerance and smoothing settings affect execution
- Experience in aerospace, defence or another regulated engineering software environment
- Experience with release engineering at an ISV: CI/CD, installer and licensing technologies, SBOM and dependency management
- Experience using agentic software development practices.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
What We Offer
- Competitive salary, dependent on experience
- Share options in a venture-backed spinout at seed stage
- Genuine architectural ownership: the integration boundary you design becomes the foundation of both our product and our partner channel
- A small, senior team including a VP Engineering with three decades in enterprise software, a CTO co-inventor of the core technology, and direct access to the founders
- Significant career growth potential as the business scales, with the opportunity to shape your role, broaden your responsibilities, and grow with the company
- Sheffield base at the heart of the UK's advanced manufacturing cluster
How to Apply
Send a CV and a short note describing two things: an integration or API you built that other engineers depended on, and a time you made a complex piece of software simpler for its end users, to hiring@digitalcnc.ai.
DigitalCNC is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all backgrounds.
Our Assessment Process
What We Value
Alongside the skills listed in this advert, we assess four things in every role and at every stage: your motivation for joining us specifically, your attitude (ownership, curiosity and honesty about what you do not know), your willingness to use AI tools, and your openness to others. DigitalCNC is an AI-native company and we use these tools daily to amplify our own expertise; you do not need experience with any particular tool, just genuine openness to working this way. We are also a proudly inclusive company. We do not assess your beliefs or background, but we do expect every member of our team to treat everyone with respect, and we assess that throughout the process. If that is how you work anyway, you will not notice it happening.
Shortlisting
We score every application against the essential criteria in this advert, nothing else. You will hear from us either way.
Screening Call (30 minutes, online video call)
An informal conversation about your background, your motivation and the practicalities. We will ask you to explain something technical in plain language, and how you currently use (or would like to use) AI tools in your work.
Technical Session (60 minutes, online video call)
You will work through a realistic technical scenario related to the role you are applying for and talk to us through your thinking. There is nothing to revise; we care about how you reason, not what you have memorised. Saying 'I don't know, but here is how I'd find out' is a good answer.
Final Meeting (half day, in person in Sheffield)
You will see the product properly, meet the team, and give a short 15-minute presentation on a past project of your choice. We will reimburse your reasonable travel expenses. This stage is as much about you assessing us as the reverse.
Offer
We take references seriously and move quickly: you will have a decision within 48 hours of your final meeting.
The whole process typically takes two to three weeks. Interviewers score independently against published criteria before comparing notes, so decisions are based on evidence, not impressions. If you need any adjustments at any stage, just ask; it will never affect how you are assessed. We welcome applicants from every route into engineering.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills
Location