Power Electronic Engineer, £45,000-£50,000, Midlands

Hi,

I am looking for Power Electronic Design Engineer who are interested in career opportunities.

A power products manufacturer that operate within the defense, security, marine, renewables sectors employing over 260 members of staff are looking to identify power electronic engineers to add to the inhouse expertise. This area of the business delivers power conversion and control system technology.

The company have experienced a fantastic period of growth, with turnover increasing by 17% annually for the past five years. This coupled with an ever increasing headcount has created a very exciting and ever evolving work force. The company operate a very niche and specialist market, providing the design of electrical power systems including that of power convertors / invertors and motors.

The successful Principle Power Engineer will ideally be experienced with
- Power Systems
- MOSFETS / IGBTs
- AC Motor Drives
- Powe Conversion Topologies
- Switching strategies
- Magnet machines

I would be happy to speak with anyone!

This is an exiciting opportunity to work at the cutting edge of a booming engineering sector, with fantastic opportunity for career progression, in an exciting and dynamic environment.

Please send your CV for immediate consideration either by clicking apply now or sending directly to josh.reevescv@amoriabond.com

 

Power Electronic Engineer, £45,000-£50,000, Midlands
...
The company have experienced a fantastic period of growth, with turnover increasing by 17% annually for the past five years.
...

For a company with great growth the pay seems really poor? Especially with the high cost of living in the UK?

 

Everybody is shopping on the discount rack in this economy.

 

The commute is a little too much for me

 

The commute is a little too much for me

Back in about 1982, national Semi was setting up an engineering facility and fab in Greenock, Scotland. They asked if anybody here in Silicon Valley would move there and they all said: "Are you crazy?"

So Nat Semi just laid a bunch of people off and said: "We do have openings in the Scotland plant...."

They want to use facilities in places like the UK because cost of living is cheap but most important: no other similar job openings nearby so they don't have to worry about competitors hiring away their people.

 

They want to use facilities in places like the UK because cost of living is cheap

That may have been true in 1982 - although I doubt it. It certainly isn't true today!
I am constantly in awe of the prices those of you in the US have to pay for electronics goods. Here in the UK, we pay at least the same figure in '£' as you do in '$' -- and usually more!
No , most international companies jack their prices way up for the UK market. The car makers actually call the UK 'Treasure Island' !

 

That may have been true in 1982 - although I doubt it. It certainly isn't true today!
I am constantly in awe of the prices those of you in the US have to pay for electronics goods. Here in the UK, we pay at least the same figure in '£' as you do in '$' -- and usually more!
No , most international companies jack their prices way up for the UK market. The car makers actually call the UK 'Treasure Island' !

By cost of living, I was talking about housing and food. In silicon valley, a dumpy track house right now in a "working class neighborhood" is selling for about $900,000. Not a misprint, $900,000. In the nicer places like Saratoga and Palo Alto it's $1.5M and up just to get a fixer upper. Just about anyplace within 50 miles of Silicon Valley has that effect. Food is also ridiculous.... I just got back from the market in shock.

Employers have to adjust salaries accordingly. Senior level application engineers were making about $130,000/yr back in 2008 when I was dumped by nat Semi. Experienced designers were a lot more.

The companies go cheap by setting up in other states like Arizona, Texas, etc or going overseas.

They also hire green card foreign nationals here on a B1B visa because they can underpay the heck out of them because employers have to "sponsor" them and it's a lot harder for them to change jobs. Every engineer hired into my group from 1995 onward was a Chinese citizen here on a B1B and they got paid about 50% less than US citizens.

The reason we pay less for electronics and other market goods than you do is we have a lot of competition here and our country is not slapping tariffs on goods. Once a country starts putting tariffs on goods, other countries retaliate and the whole thing goes straight up.

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1077947902&type=RESOURCES

 

The tax on gasoline in the UK is double or more the tax in North America.

I don't know about the price of Natural Gas for heating, the cost of electricity, the cost of water, and property taxes in the UK.
Income tax? Government paid health care?

 

The tax on gasoline in the UK is double or more the tax in North America.

I don't know about the price of Natural Gas for heating, the cost of electricity, the cost of water, and property taxes in the UK.
Income tax? Government paid health care?

Found this: looks like in Greenock you can get a huge house for about 1/3 what it costs near Silicon Valley. Not sure about taxes, but it's probably higher than ours since they have so many government paid freebies.

 

Of course houses are cheaper when they are far from civilization. Then you spend nearly half a day commuting to your job in the big city then returning home with millions of other people.

Here people in the suburbs are not far from the big city since we can see it in the distance (about 35km). In rush hour a car takes about 1.5 hours but a commuter train takes less than 30 minutes.

 

A good design engineer can work from home. AND live in a beautiful cheap country area with excellent cost of living.

Driving to/from work everyday in the city is what people did last century.

 

Driving to/from work everyday in the city is what people did last century.

I flew to many of my distant jobsites. I drove downtown to a few jobsites. I took the commuter train a few times.

Hee, hee. I retired last century.
Now every day is a Saturday. I do whatever I want whenever I want.

 

A good design engineer can work from home. AND live in a beautiful cheap country area with excellent cost of living.

Driving to/from work everyday in the city is what people did last century.

Yeah, they have been saying that for 30 years.... and it's never been true, still isn't.

Problem is, there is no substitute for being able to walk into somebody's office and set a piece of paper in front of them and talk.

I went through this with Nat Semi for 20 years with their stupid "remote design centers". The single most immovable impediment to rapid development is not being able to talk to somebody face to face.

 

Yes but now is VERY different to 20 or 30 years ago. These days you can skype "face to face" in real time, and you can send a multi Mb file anywhere in the world as easily as you can hand someone a bit of paper over a desk.

Of course it depends on what you are developing and if you have all the equipment and hardware you need. The old 1960's model had all the hardware in one place and everyone travels to it every day. These days we all have supercomputers/simulators/CADs in our loungeroom!

 

Yes but now is VERY different to 20 or 30 years ago. These days you can skype "face to face" in real time

You missed my point: I started work 30 years ago and ended in 2008. During the whole time we heard about how designers didn't need to be on the scene, and I worked the last 20 years at National Semi that had at least three "remote" design centers as well as a local design group, and I say without fear of contradiction: not being able to talk face to face is a major impediment to progress.

The best companies like Linear Technology knew better.

"Remote" employees are the ones who have the NTO (never take ownership) work ethic and use the physical distance to minimize annoying interruptions.

As an example, here is an actual conversation that took place between myself and one of the designers who DID work in the same building as me:

ME: "The XXXX oscillates with source impedance in this range."

DESIGNER: "That's impossible..... we simulated that and it worked perfectly."

ME: "Well it's setup right now on my bench and your part is singing like an Italian opera star..."

DESIGNER: "Then there is something wrong with your setup...."

ME: "Then come in the lab and show me where I went wrong."

(grumbling all the way) Looks over setup, pokes at things and pulls wires. Walks out cursing and mumbles: "I'll have my technician take some more data."



SHOW US HOW THAT WOULD HAVE WORKED OVER SKYPE......

 

Pretty much the same, but you would have demonstrated the oscillation by an image of the scope or whatever.

I do get your point, but I was not saying that home based or distributed designers are exactly as good as designers in the same building. In some ways they can be better and in some ways not as good. My point was that it's a last-century business model where the design brains for a company all have to work out of the one building.

Everyone is entitled to a different view of what is "best" of course, but outside of personal opinion it is a fact that design talent is getting more decentralised as technology progresses.

 

Whatever.

What I learned in 30 years with the industry is the working world within any company is divided into two classes: the people who live in the fantasy world and the ones who are forced to live in reality.

The latter are forced to be reality based because at some point in a development process of any product or service, IT ACTUALLY HAS TO WORK. In other words, somebody has to fix all the things that are wrong and test it to verify it does what it says, and deliver it working to the customer.

Engineers are usually required to be in the reality side by definition of their job function. The ones that are too incompetent to be able to make things work get out of it as fast as they can. Many go into marketing, where all they have to do is sling baloney all day and commit other people's time and skills to doing things. Others go into management as fast as they can to get away from having to do anything technical which is functionally verifiable.

One of the hallmarks of managers is what is called "magical thinking", which is to say warping what they perceive to what they wish the real world was. The biggest example of this is the generic phrase: work smarter, not harder. In other words, there is always a magical way to make something easier, faster, better, etc (without any added cost or resources) if you are just smart enough to find it.... usually used when creating new product development schedules. In school, we called it ATAMO thinking (And Then A Miracle Occurs). These are the same people telling us that off site design won't impact the release of new design products.

Baloney.

Tradeoffs all come with costs, despite the fact the people who don't have to make things work don't admit it. Having designers, or any other person/resource remotely located comes with a cost to the development team. I know because I lived it and I was in the reality side.

There's no magic.

By the way..... ever hear of a company called Apple?

Well, it seems they made the choice to put their facilities to build the new I Phones in China. No problem with that, right? You can always skype away and all that.... but they recently had a major meltdown at the plant and lead times for the new, expensive phones have shot out. And new phones are arriving with damage.

No free lunch. When resources move away, control of the process goes with them.

Riots involving thousands of disgruntled workers have erupted at one of Foxconn's plants in China. Foxconn builds and supplies Apple's iPhone devices, including the new iPhone 5, as well as various other electronics for companies like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and other well known companies.

It's being reported that the plant could stay closed for up to several days. If so, it would come at a time when Apple's newest smartphone is on pace to become the best selling iPhone (and smartphone) of all time. However, strife between workers and management at Foxconn (otherwise known as Hon Hai Precision) are nothing new. Reports of poor working conditions, long hours, and insufficient pay have been circulating for years, and last year saw a rash of employee suicides make headlines at a frightening pace.

I wonder how smart that decision to build new products in China looks now? I'm guessing that "work smarter not harder" didn't translate well into Chinese....


Wait.... you can't control new product quality over a 10,000 mile gap? Who could have forseen a problem with that....

This morning, Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller told a user that the iPhone 5′s aluminum back naturally makes it more prone to scratches. That’s all fine and dandy, but that’s only a small part of the problem. The real problem Apple seems to be having is with its quality assurance programs over at Foxconn. Now that more pre-ordered phones are arriving, it’s becoming pretty clear that despite Apple’s assurances that every phone is being built with nanometer precision, something is off with this first batch of iPhone 5s. How do I know? I just got one.

Of course, there was never any indication this might happen......

Apple is no stranger to shipping scuffed up devices after the 2012 iPad was also met with manufacturing flaws which were believed to be caused by lax quality controls at Apple’s Foxconn manufacturing facilities.

​

But it's not like such things cost money or anything:

Apple’s stock is down almost 2 percent after the company reported Monday morning they had sold only 5 million iPhones 5s in the first three days the phone was on sale. Analysts expected Apple to sell between 6 and 10 million phones in the three days after the phone went on sale September 21. The company’s stock fell more than $9 to 690.79 at the close in New York, recovering some toward the end.



Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

“Demand for iPhone 5 has been incredible and we are working hard to get an iPhone 5 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible,” Cook said. “While we have sold out of our initial supply, stores continue to receive iPhone 5 shipments regularly and customers can continue to order online and receive an estimated delivery date.

They never learn.

 

I do get your point, but I was not saying that home based or distributed designers are exactly as good as designers in the same building. In some ways they can be better and in some ways not as good.

No, They can be CHEAPER, but there is no way they can be better for the needs of the development process.

 

Whatever.

What I learned in 30 years with the industry is the working world within any company is divided into two classes: the people who live in the fantasy world and the ones who are forced to live in reality.
...

Whatever back at you.

You obviously have every strong opinions on this, but you are not the only person in the world who works in design. I have 30 years industry experience too, but from the other side where I have always worked for myself and do design at home. I design power control systems (similar to the OP's requirements) and make some very nice stuff that works really well thank you.

Where you seem to have a jaded view of how bad things can be in a large company design team, I have good experiences with how well a design can be done by a careful designer working from home and in conjunction with others at distance.

No, They can be CHEAPER, but there is no way they can be better for the needs of the development process.

Sure they can be better working from home. You yourself have raised valid large-workplace problems like bad management etc. Also with teams working remotely they generally have their own equipment and facilities so they are not fighting over resources as may happen with engineers in a large company. Their equipment is also optimised for their specific design needs, allowing better utilisation of specialists.

You seem to be taking a "100% black" viewpoint, and I'm not going to argue with someone like that. Reality is grey and in reality remote teamwork has some pros and some cons, and the pros are growing and the cons reducing, which explains why remote teamwork is growing worldwide and will continue to grow.

At this point I will apologise to the OP for derailing his thread, and exit.

 

I worked from home as an applications engineer for years. Before accusations fly let me say that I have a dedicated work space, dedicated test equipment, I build my own breadboards, and my major output was circuits that worked so I could write about them. I have several friends that work out of their house, and they are the most effective engineers I know.
Consider the positives of working at home: no commuting time or cost, choose your location, no BS jobs that somebody else screwed up, no casual conversations, management is not in your face all the time, help is a phone call away, etc. The company benefits too: no location cost, worker that can communicate (home workers do this or die), some of the best engineering jobs done on time and on budget.
There are so many advantages to working at home I wonder why BountyHunter let himself be used by the poor performers. There is always good and bad, but you must make the choice. I have traveled the world fixing problems created by factory engineers; they created a lucrative income for me. Screw-ups work at home and in the factory.