Product Validation Engineer

About the Job
🎯 Product Validation Engineer
🌍 London, N4, with regular travel to our manufacturing partners in Europe and Asia
🏛️ 4 days in our office, 1 day working from home
🤝 Reporting to our Founder
💰 £40-55K + equity

About Shellworks
Our vision is a world where the products around you don’t damage our environment or our health. At Shellworks we’re making that a reality by creating high performance plastic-free materials for everyday products.

Our technology Vivomer makes the impossible possible. It’s grown by bacteria using fermentation, creating a material that is stable in use but degrades in every environment. Its breakthrough is being dishwasher safe and home compostable at the same time.

We’ve closed our Series A and are working with some of the world’s most recognised brands to replace plastic at volume. We’re at an inflection point: scaling from proof-of-concept to mass-market production.

The Role
This is a hands on engineering role. You’ll prove that Vivomer parts perform in the real world and that every part we ship meets spec, working across our materials, design and manufacturing teams and on factory floors with our partners.

Vivomer is a new material going into products that have to perform like plastic: on shelf, in transit, in the dishwasher and in the hands of consumers. Our customers are some of the world’s biggest brands, and they need to trust that it will.

We’re looking for someone who has validated products at a high volume manufacturer and wants to build validation at Shellworks from the ground up. You design tests that reflect how products actually fail, and you have a pragmatic view of which checks really matter.

Where the focus is today
Proving Vivomer parts perform, then making sure they keep performing at volume.

Validation and test engineering

• Turn product requirements into validation plans, covering ingredient compatibility, impact, transit, sealing and aesthetics

• Design and build test rigs, and correlate them to real world performance

• Run DOEs on new tools and products to find the process window, and set specs with our design and manufacturing teams

• Define in line testing and aesthetic standards with our partners so every part is validated before it ships

• Run measurement system analysis, capability studies and SPC on new and running products

• Review our checks regularly: cut the ones that don’t add value and add the ones that are missing

Manufacturing partners

• Run process validation for new tools and products at our partners

• Support audits and qualification of new manufacturing partners

• Track partner performance and drive corrective actions to closure

Day to day

• Own incoming inspection and traceability

• Raise NCRs when parts aren’t up to standard, and decide on rework or rejection

• Train and support the inspectors and technicians at our partners who run the checks we define

• Lead root cause analysis on line issues and customer complaints, and fix them for good

Beyond

• Work with our Founder to select and roll out our quality management system as we scale into production

• Help build our validation procedures, documentation and change control, without the bureaucracy

Who you are

• At least 3 years in product validation, test, reliability or quality engineering, ideally at a high volume consumer hardware or packaging manufacturer

• A degree in materials, polymers, mechanical engineering or similar

• You’ve taken a product from design validation through to mature production

• You’ve designed tests and rigs that predict real world failures, and can show they do

• Hands on with DOE, metrology, GD&T, SPC, MSA and capability studies

• You’ve worked with suppliers on the factory floor and know what good looks like

• A structured problem solver: 8D, 5 whys, fishbone

• You understand how a material’s behaviour shows up in a finished part

• Excited to build the frontier of how materials are made

• High tolerance for ambiguity, low tolerance for bureaucracy

What We Offer
🌴 28 days holiday + statutory holidays
👶 12 weeks maternity, 6 weeks paternity, both at full pay
💚 Heka wellbeing allowance: gym, therapy, nutrition, fertility support and more
🩺 Virtual GP with same or next day appointments
🚲 Cycle to work scheme: save up to 42% via salary sacrifice
🍕 Daily catered lunch at the office