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Design Engineer
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Product Development Engineer — Contract
Cheltenham, UK | Mechanical / Mechatronics | Fractional to Full-Time
Photonic Muscle™ is developing light-driven artificial muscles for robotics, wearables, automation, and physical AI. We are moving from materials IP into real products and working demonstrators, and we’re looking for a hands-on Product Development Engineer to join our R&D activity in Cheltenham.
This is not a role centred around presentations and theoretical concepts. We want someone who enjoys building hardware: designing mechanisms, making prototypes, testing them, finding out what doesn’t work, and rapidly improving them.
What you’ll work on
You’ll design and build complete actuation systems around Photonic Muscle technology, including:
- Mechanical mechanisms and load paths
- CAD and rapid prototyping
- Thermal behaviour and packaging
- Integration of LEDs, sensors, and simple electronics
- Force, stroke, thermal, and cycle-life test rigs
- Compact, presentation-quality demonstrators
- Prototype integration into existing products and mechanisms
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Mechanical execution is the core of the role, but you should be comfortable working across disciplines to make a complete prototype function.
We’re looking for
- Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Robotics, or equivalent practical experience
- Approximately 2–5+ years of hands-on hardware development
- Strong mechanical design fundamentals
- Experience designing and building real mechanisms
- CAD capability — ideally SolidWorks
- Rapid prototyping experience, including 3D printing and basic fabrication
- Good understanding of materials, compliant mechanisms, and thermal behaviour
- Enough electronics/control knowledge to integrate complete prototypes
Experience with soft robotics, artificial muscles, SMA, wearable robotics, haptics, miniature mechanisms, or thermally driven actuation would be particularly relevant.
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The contract
This is a flexible contract opportunity and could be:
- A defined development project
- A fixed number of days per week
- An initial development sprint
- Fractional through to effectively full-time
The work will be based around Cheltenham. We work quickly, with a strong bias toward physical results.
Interested?
Send us:
- A short introduction and why the work interests you
- Examples of mechanisms, prototypes, or physical products you have personally built
- Your availability and preferred contract arrangement
- Portfolio links, CAD, videos, GitHub, or build documentation
Photonic Muscle™ — building the new physics of motion.
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