Manufacturing Engineer – Paint (Series Production)

Overview

In this role you will support paint-series production in a live factory, ensuring stable and capable processes while driving quality, cost, safety, and efficiency improvements. You will collaborate with Manufacturing, Quality, Production, Maintenance, Materials and Operations to resolve issues, sustain process capability, and enhance first-time quality. The position offers real impact in optimizing paint operations, tooling, and process changes within a high-performance manufacturing environment. This is a chance to shape series production performance at a leading automotive brand.

Pay / Benefits

• Structured career development framework
• 25 days’ holiday plus bank holidays
• Annual buy & sell up to five days
• Enhanced company pension scheme
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Private medical insurance and health cash plan

Responsibilities

• Provide manufacturing engineering support to Paint series production areas to maintain stability, safety and efficiency
• Investigate and resolve production, quality, and process issues using structured problem-solving to identify root causes and implement corrective actions
• Monitor process performance, identify trends and drive continuous improvement to improve first-time quality, throughput and efficiency
• Support Paint Shop readiness for daily production requirements including process availability, tooling, fixtures, and standard operating conditions
• Maintain and improve paint application methods, process parameters, work instructions, and standardized ways of working
• Lead or support PFMEA reviews, control plan updates, risk reduction activities, and process change control in series production
• Work with Production, Quality and Maintenance to reduce downtime, improve repeatability, and resolve issues promptly
• Support facility, layout, and capacity improvements to optimize flow and performance within Paint
• Generate and analyse Hours Per Car and other performance data to support efficiency and cost reduction
• Support part quality maturation, escalation, and long-term corrective action to protect customer quality and delivery

Key requirements

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Automotive Engineering or related discipline (or equivalent experience)
• Experience in live series production environment (advantageous)
• Knowledge of paint application processes, process control, defect reduction and quality improvement (advantageous)
• Root cause analysis and structured problem-solving methods (e.g., 5 Why, Ishikawa, 8D)
• PFMEA, control plans, process change control, SOPs and work instruction development
• Specification and improvement of paint jigs, fixtures, tooling and process equipment
• Experience with vehicle assembly processes, finishing, rework or rectification environments (advantageous)
• Continuous improvement, lean manufacturing, cost reduction, throughput improvement and safe working practices

• Structured problem-solving
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Analytical mindset
• PFMEA
• Control plans
• Process change control

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