Research Associate

The School of Physics, Engineering and Technology brings physicists and engineers together to push the frontiers of knowledge, foster innovation and meet the grand challenges facing society. Our aim is to deliver world-leading research in both fundamental and applied areas whilst developing new technologies that work for the public good, in an environment where everyone can thrive.

As a School, equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to our culture and we strive to provide a working environment which allows all staff and students to contribute fully, to flourish, and to excel. We aim to ensure that there is a supportive and egalitarian culture at all levels and across all staff groups and offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds. We are proud to hold Juno Champion and Athena Swan bronze awards, which recognise our commitment to creating an equitable and fully inclusive environment in which staff and students can thrive. We aim to inspire young people to engage with science and engineering through our outreach work.

Role

Your primary role in this post will be to support the project STARFAB: A Space Warehouse Concept and Ecosystem to Energize European In-space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing. This project is funded for 30 months by the Horizon Europe programme, and ambitions to design and demonstrate a novel concept of an orbital automated warehouse. For more information, please visit the project website at https://www.horizon-starfab.com.

The primary focus will be the design, modelling, construction, and testing of a novel Mobile Inspection Module, which is a robotically deployable non-destructive testing sensor suite for monitoring abnormal conditions and damage to warehoused modular Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs) as well as the warehouse hardware itself. You will be responsible for the Computer-Aided Design of hardware and software, sensor interfacing and testing, and data analysis programming in C/C++ and Python languages on Linux and embedded platforms.

Please note this role is offered on a fixed term basis with funding available up until 31 May 2026.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

You will have:

• A PhD in Robotics, Automation, Aerospace Systems, Electronic Engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Ability to perform academic tasks.
• Knowledge in Sensing, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, as well as the broader field of related disciplines, to engage in high quality research.
• Technical Research and development experience.
• Computer-Aided Design skills, electronic PCB design and prototyping skills using Altium Designer, KiCAD, or similar EDA packages.
• Embedded systems bootstrapping and programming experience.

Interview date: To be confirmed

For informal enquiries: please contact Dr. Mark Post at mark.post@york.ac.uk or contact the PET HR team at pet-hr@york.ac.uk for further details about this position.

The University strives to be diverse and inclusive – a place where we can ALL be ourselves.

We particularly encourage applications from people who identify as Black, Asian or from a Minority Ethnic background, who are underrepresented at the University.

We offer family friendly, flexible working arrangements, with forums and inclusive facilities to support our staff. #EqualityatYork

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