Mechatronics Engineer

General Information

Solvay is a science company whose technologies bring benefits to many aspects of daily life. With more than 24,100 employees in 64 countries, Solvay bonds people, ideas and elements to reinvent progress. The Group seeks to create sustainable shared value for all, notably through its Solvay One Planet plan crafted around three pillars: protecting the climate, preserving resources and fostering better life. The Group’s innovative solutions contribute to safer, cleaner, and more sustainable products found in homes, food and consumer goods, planes, cars, batteries, smart devices, health care applications, water and air purification systems. Founded in 1863, Solvay today ranks among the world’s top three companies for the vast majority of its activities and delivered net sales of €10.2 billion in 2019. Solvay is listed on Euronext Brussels (SOLB) and Paris and in the United States, where its shares (SOLVY) are traded through a Level I ADR program.

The Research & Innovation function (R&I) leads Solvay into new growth territories with breakthrough innovation to generate new products, applications and processes in the field of sustainable chemistry. Partners with the GBUs to deliver more value and leverages the Group’s capabilities to improve competitiveness and create new business opportunities for Solvay and its customers.

Job Overview and Responsibilities

Solvay is seeking a Mechatronics Engineer with mechanical and electrical engineering fundamentals and highly developed robotics and programming skills to support laboratories in research acceleration. Solvay is taking the leap for digital transformation to accelerate the G.R.O.W. strategy and our sustainability roadmap, Solvay One Planet. Solvay recently launched the Connected Research initiative to prepare the future of our research. Solvay is looking to reinforce its Automation and Robotics team by recruiting talents to deliver our digital research transformation. By joining the Automation & Robotics (A&R) team, you will support Global Business Units (GBU) R&I laboratories to accelerate research and innovation programs in Solvay. The goal of A&R Lab is to enable the high throughput evaluation of the performance of Solvay products for their applications, and as a consequence, accelerate the development of innovative products. The A&R team serves labs that have expertise spanning from microbiology, to chemical synthesis, formulation, all the way to material science, offering the possibility to discover a large array of science and technology.Responsibilities:

• Identify state of the art existing robots, such as Zinsser, Chemspeed or Opentrons when meeting the needs of customers.
• Program devices to create modular robotics systems. Program movements of 6‑Axis collaborative robotic arms or linear axis in harmony with several devices, such as actuators, sensors, pumps, pH meters, balances, viscometers to acquire, display and analyze data automatically.
• Design simple mechanical components in order to properly integrate the hardware components of the whole robotic setup.
• Design intuitive and user‑friendly HMI.
• Design robotics and autonomous systems, dynamics and motion control, coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning to pave the way of autonomous smart labs.
• Deeply understand customer needs, while analyzing workflows and identifying automation opportunities. Act as a project leader: build collaborative projects with internal partners, define technical scope, timing and budget, prototype and design user‑friendly tools for researchers and support stakeholders in deployment and use of the solutions.
• Interface with a global Connected Research network, including other A&R labs (Lyon, Shanghai and Stamford), artificial intelligence team for data analysis and Lab Data Management teams to ensure that a digital strategy is implemented in Solvay labs.
• Demonstrate a safety commitment / behavior and experience in risk analysis for safety certification with respect to Machine Directive.
• Practical experience in chemistry lab environments.

Education and Experience

• Master level or Engineer degree in one of the following areas: Robotic Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, Computer Engineering or closely related fields.
• Excellent programming skills in Python and C++ are mandatory. Experience with libraries such as OpenCV and PCL will be appreciated.
• Experience with Git‑based source code repositories such as GitLab.
• Create user‑friendly user interface (GUI) to program smart mechatronics systems.
• Experience with ROS will be appreciated.
• First experience with Arduino, Raspberry.
• Skills in 3D mechanical design will be much appreciated (SolidWorks, or open source such as FreeCAD).

Skills

• Excellent problem‑solving skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills to effectively work with internal customers.
• Strong collaborative skills, working in a multidisciplinary team environment and cross‑functional groups.
• Ideally the candidate must be able to think outside of the box and be comfortable with change in order to support new ways of working.
• English is mandatory.