07/10/2026
🚀 **WE’RE HIRING — ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ENGINEER**
📍 Sheffield / Rotherham | Full-time | On-site
💷 **Up to £30,000 per annum, dependent on experience + performance-related bonus**
**This role requires genuine, hands-on additive manufacturing experience — but technical ability alone isn’t enough.**
We’re looking for someone who is practical, capable, curious and confident working with people.
Someone who can understand a manufacturing problem, talk it through with a customer and help turn an idea into something that can actually be made.
ABOUT FIG3D
FIG3D | Forging Innovation Group is an advanced manufacturing and technology business based on the Sheffield/Rotherham border.
**We are not a 3D print shop.**
Additive manufacturing is an important part of our manufacturing toolkit, sitting alongside engineering, fabrication, laser processing, advanced materials, product development and digital technologies.
We currently have a number of exciting developments underway across:
• Defence and UAV technologies
• Battery and thermal-management systems
• Intelligent hardware
• Advanced materials
• Digital Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) technologies
• Automation and resilient supply-chain solutions
• Data-centre and infrastructure applications
Our work often takes a customer from:
**Concept → DFM → prototype → validation → repeatable production**
That means this role is about much more than making parts.
WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING
You’ll work hands-on within our manufacturing operation, including:
• Running and managing multiple additive manufacturing systems
• Preparing, slicing and optimising customer components
• Selecting appropriate orientation, supports and manufacturing parameters
• Diagnosing failed prints and understanding why they failed
• Troubleshooting extrusion, adhesion, warping, dimensional and support issues
• Maintaining, calibrating and repairing equipment
• Making CAD modifications to customer parts
• Supporting Design for Manufacture (DFM) decisions
• Improving production reliability, quality and throughput
• Managing multiple live production jobs and customer priorities
• Supporting prototype development and repeat production
You’ll also work directly with customers.
That could mean:
• Discussing an initial idea or engineering challenge
• Understanding what the customer is actually trying to achieve
• Helping identify the right manufacturing approach
• Explaining material, design and process options clearly
• Supporting DFM conversations
• Reviewing prototypes and recommending improvements
• Helping take a project from an initial conversation into production
WE NEED SOMEONE WHO IS GOOD WITH PEOPLE
You don’t need to be a salesperson.
But you do need to be comfortable talking to customers.
We want someone with a **positive, engaging and confident personality** who can build rapport, ask sensible questions and communicate technical information without making it unnecessarily complicated.
You should be comfortable sitting down with an engineer, production manager, founder or customer and having a genuine conversation about their problem.
That means being able to:
✓ Listen properly
✓ Ask good questions
✓ Explain technical issues clearly
✓ Challenge an idea respectfully when necessary
✓ Suggest practical alternatives
✓ Build confidence with customers
✓ Represent FIG3D professionally
We want someone who enjoys solving problems **with people, not just machines.**
ENGINEERING MATERIALS
A key part of the role will involve working with **high-performance engineering polymers and fibre-reinforced materials**.
You should understand that engineering-grade materials require more than simply selecting a standard profile.
You’ll need to consider:
• Material properties and intended application
• Moisture control and material preparation
• Processing temperatures
• Thermal requirements
• Warping and dimensional stability
• Layer adhesion and anisotropy
• Part orientation
• Mechanical loading
• Surface finish and tolerance
• Appropriate material selection
Experience with materials such as **PA, PC, ASA, PET-based engineering materials, carbon-fibre reinforced polymers, glass-fibre reinforced polymers, PPA and other high-performance thermoplastics** would be particularly valuable.
THE IMPORTANT BIT
**You must already be competent with additive manufacturing.**
We can develop your wider engineering, CAD, DFM and manufacturing knowledge.
We cannot teach the fundamentals of 3D printing from scratch for this particular position.
You should already be able to:
✓ Set up and run FDM/FFF systems independently
✓ Slice components confidently without supervision
✓ Diagnose why a print has failed
✓ Adjust manufacturing parameters to solve problems
✓ Carry out routine printer maintenance
✓ Understand orientation, supports, walls, infill and layer strategy
✓ Understand temperature and material behaviour
✓ Work confidently with engineering-grade polymers
✓ Manage several machines and production jobs simultaneously
**If a print fails, your first instinct should be to understand the root cause and correct it.**
YOU DON’T NECESSARILY NEED A DEGREE
We care much more about what you can actually do.
Maybe you’ve:
• Built or modified your own machines
• Run your own small print setup or workshop
• Designed and manufactured functional components
• Spent hundreds of hours experimenting with materials and settings
• Used CAD to solve real engineering problems
• Worked within a print farm, makerspace, university workshop or manufacturing environment
• Produced functional engineering parts rather than purely decorative prints
That practical experience is what interests us.
Experience with CAD and slicing software such as **Fusion 360, SolidWorks, Onshape, OrcaSlicer or equivalent platforms** would be useful.
THIS ISN’T A BUTTON-PUSHING ROLE
We’re building a serious UK advanced manufacturing capability.
The opportunity is much broader than running printers.
You could find yourself supporting a Defence programme, contributing to a battery development project, solving a manufacturing challenge for a customer or helping develop our digital MaaS technology.
We want someone interested in how things are:
**Designed. Engineered. Manufactured. Improved.**
You’ll be joining a small team where responsibility comes quickly.
Ultimately, we’re looking for someone who can develop into taking real ownership of additive manufacturing while also becoming a trusted technical point of contact for our customers.
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
**1. Initial application**
Tell us:
• What additive manufacturing systems you’ve personally operated
• Which slicing software you use
• Which CAD packages you can use
• Which engineering materials you’ve processed
• What maintenance or repairs you’ve carried out
• Examples of functional parts you’ve produced
• Any experience you have working directly with customers
**2. 20-minute conversation**
We want to understand both your technical ability and how you communicate.
**3. Practical assessment at FIG3D**
We’ll give you a component, a manufacturing challenge and a problem to solve.
We want to see how you think, how you approach problems and how you explain your decisions.
**4. Paid trial day**
Spend time working with us in the real production environment.
**5. Offer to the right person**
WANT TO STAND OUT?
Show us something you’ve designed and manufactured.
Even better, show us something you’ve:
**Designed → printed → tested → broken → improved → made again.**
And if you can explain **why** you made the decisions you did, even better.
We’d much rather see evidence of practical ability, curiosity and personality than a polished CV full of engineering buzzwords.
📍 Sheffield Road, Rotherham / Sheffield
Interested?
Send us a message with a little about yourself, your additive manufacturing experience, the materials you’ve worked with and examples of things you’ve designed or manufactured.
**FIG3D | Manufacturing Intelligent Hardware | Buillt on Purpose.**
Contact Mark Pinder for my info
07504234203
[email protected]
