New Engineering Jobs Announced At Nissan Sunderland Plant

Up to 200 new positions across the plant will support the current record levels of production, the introduction of electric vehicle technology to the UK at the new Battery Plant, and the development of two exciting new models which have been announced for Nissan Sunderland Plant - the 100% electric Nissan LEAF and the next generation Nissan Qashqai.



The scale of Nissan’s new recruitment campaign is such that a new website has been launched for prospective employees to find out more about its Sunderland Plant. This will provide details of all the new jobs, information about the plant and a section on the benefits of living and working in Sunderland and North East England.



The new website will feature all the new job opportunities as they become available and is now live at www.careersatnissan.co.uk



Kevin Fitzpatrick, Nissan Vice President for Manufacturing in the UK, said: “Nissan is actively recruiting for new engineers and maintenance technicians to join our highly skilled workforce at our Sunderland Plant.



“These new recruits will play a key role not only in maintaining our record production levels, but in making sure that our Battery Plant and future new models are introduced successfully.”



Nissan, as one of the founding UK companies in the UK’s new Talent Retention Solution (TRS), will be looking to match a number of its forthcoming job opportunities with skilled engineers facing redundancy from the defence sector.



The TRS was launched last week by UK Minister for Business Mark Prisk,and will match these employees to UK companies in growing sectors of advanced manufacturing and engineering.



Posts currently being advertised include Production Engineers, Facility Engineers, QA Engineers, Press Die Maintenance Technicians, Battery Tooling Technicians and Facilities Maintenance Technicians.



The new www.careersatnissan.co.uk website also features a number of current engineers explaining what life is like at Nissan Sunderland Plant.



They include Rachel Williams, 25, a Parts Quality Assurance Engineer, who has worked at Nissan Sunderland Plant since 2007. She commented: “The thing that first attracted me to Nissan was that the company was willing to help new engineers to progress and develop.



“Currently I’m responsible for approximately 60 suppliers, looking at their processes and products, auditing them, improving the quality assurance of their parts and reacting to concerns we get on the production line.



“It’s a happy place to work. I enjoy coming to work every day, which I’m not sure a lot of people can say. You have a different job to do every day.”



Josh Blythe, 26, a Press Shop Engineer, joined Nissan following his Masters degree and is now helping to plan for the start of Nissan LEAF production in 2013. He added: “I would describe Nissan as fast-paced, cross-functional, and very exciting.



“I’m part of the team working on the Nissan LEAF. At the moment I’m looking at a number of different production plans and capacity plans to figure out how the press shop will produce the parts for the LEAF.



“Since joining Nissan I feel as though I’ve developed a lot and in parallel have been working towards, and recently achieved, recognition as a professional chartered engineer.”



Carly de Silva, 32, who has been with Nissan for seven years, is a Process Engineer for the new Battery Plant.



Explaining her current challenges, she said: “I have a coordination role at the new Battery Plant, and as we’re at the installation stage it’s the busiest time for us right now. The batteries are built in a clean room, and we’ve never done this before at Nissan so it’s a big learning curve.



“I’ve been responsible for setting up the clean room procedures and protocol, monitoring those and trying to get it right before we go into trial production. Once we go into the trials, that’s when we’ve got to produce the quality parts, so it’s imperative we get it right at this stage.”