Project Engineer - Process and Test Equipment

You will own the mining test equipment product line: the installed base, spares support, refurbishment and current builds. The engineering content varies job to job. A good deal of the mining work is built to customer-supplied drawings, where the value you add is in optimisation, buildability, efficient execution and tight control of engineering change. Other projects — typically the smaller and more unique ones — you will engineer and draw yourself, from proven concepts through layout, 3D modelling and detailing to a manufacturable package. Either way you will see it built on the workshop floor and delivered to the customer.

Key responsibilities

Lead assigned projects from enquiry to delivery, reporting directly to the General Manager

Review and interrogate customer drawings; find the errors, the buildability issues and the cost savings before we cut steel

Raise, track and commercially close out engineering changes

Concept development, layout, optimisation, modelling and detailing where we originate the design

Manage third-party certification and verification through to first-pass approval

Quote and estimate assigned work; support spares quoting

Share the technical and quoting work on the exclusive Australian agency for NETZSCH grinding and dispersion technology — enquiries, equipment selection and liaison with the German principal

Work directly with customers as their technical contact

Commission equipment on the floor with trades — build, assembly, testing and proving

Work alongside the Manufacturing Manager and shop floor — you will see what you draw get made, and learn from how it is made

About you

Degree qualified in mechanical engineering, or equivalent demonstrated capability

Minimum 5 years in equipment design, machine building or heavy fabrication





Comfortable preparing packages that a third-party certifier will sign

Able to run several projects at once and keep competing requirements under control

Comfortable working from someone else's drawings and reading them critically

Versatile — happy to move between product areas as workload demands

You close your own loops — you respond, follow up and report status without being chased

Practical and hands-on — you want to be on the equipment, not just modelling it

Commissioning and fault-finding experience on machinery or process equipment

About us

J.C.SMALE ENGINEERING has been building machines and equipment since 1962. We are a family-owned Australian manufacturer operating from Notting Hill in Melbourne's south-east, with a wholly owned facility in Malaysia. We design, build, install and support process and test equipment for the mining, clay and brick, and general industrial sectors, working directly with our customers rather than through head contractors. We are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified. Our engineering team is small, experienced and long-serving, and the General Manager is a mechanical engineer — technical decisions get made quickly and by people who understand them.

What we offer

Full ownership of a product line and its customer relationship — not a slice of someone else's project

Direct reporting to the General Manager. No layers, no committees

Based on site at the point of manufacture — engineering and the workshop under one roof, so you develop faster and your designs get better

Work with world-class European process technology through the exclusive Australian agency, alongside our own equipment

Genuine variety across process and test equipment, brick plant machinery and general industrial work — some projects repeat and build your depth, others are one-off and stretch you

A stable, profitable, sixty-year-old business with room to grow the role

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📌 Project Engineer - Process and Test Equipment (Melbourne)
🏢 J C Smale & Sons
📍 Melbourne