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Position: Structural engineer (Constructeur)
Company: Summum Engineering Cooperative U.A.
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands (office/remote)
Salary: 2.900 gross salary or higher depending on experience (based on 40 hours)
Working hours: 24-40 hours per week
Duration: contract for 12 months, starting Q1 2025, with possibility to extend (shorter duration possible, if desired)

What about Summum?

Summum Engineering is an award-winning structural design, engineering and optimization consultancy, founded in 2017. The company operates in the domains of architecture, engineering and construction as well as industrial design and art. Our work heavily involves the parametric modelling and optimization of structures, often involving unconventional materials, geometries or construction methods. Our team is young and international.

Our four key focus areas are:

  • lightweight structures, such as membrane, shell and spatial structures;
  • structures made by digital fabrication; as well as structures made from
  • natural, biobased and earthen materials; and,
  • renovations and reclaimed, circular materials.

Summum Engineering is a social enterprise operating as a worker-owned cooperative. This means that the company is owned by its employees who collectively determine the company’s direction. The goal of the cooperative is to contribute towards a better society and environment in general, and a sustainable built environment in particular.

What will you do?

You will work as a structural engineer on the design and engineering of ongoing projects, which at present consist of: timber building structures; and, shell and membrane structures. Ongoing research and development at the office is centered around our four key focus areas, and includes research on circular construction, bamboo structures and structural (compressed) earth.

As engineer you are or may be responsible for:

  • structural calculations and analysis of a timber building structure, in order to demonstrate serviceability and safety;
  • structural design, form-finding and/or optimization, in order to reduce material use and kick ass;
  • parametric modelling,
    • to organize and generate structural geometry for design, optimization and analysis, as well as
    • to improve and automate workflows for analysis, documentation and nerdiness; and,
  • communicating, meeting and corresponding with the project team and client;
  • documenting and reporting your results, often for submission to authorities and clients in order to obtain building permits and high-fives.

What are we looking for?

You have a strong interest in, affinity with or even a passion for structural and computational design, engineering and sustainability. You have project management skills and know how to communicate effectively.

You like learning and discovering new things, and exploring new forms of architecture, technology and/or construction. You enjoy a good brainstorm, are open minded and thoughtful of others. In your own unique way, you are very good at what you do and work well in a team, or at least keep trying to get better at it. You have a strong suspicion you might belong at Summum or fit in with the people there. You know, or think you know, what it means to work at a small firm such as ours, and to live in the city and country we are in.

You must have:

  • a completed university education in architecture, engineering or related field;
  • excellent understanding of, or growing intuition for structural behavior and structurally efficient design;
  • a strong motivation for working in (any of) our four key focus areas;
  • thorough knowledge of parametric modelling with Grasshopper/Rhino;
  • prior experience with (nonlinear) finite element modelling and analysis; and,
  • a good command of the English language, spoken and written.

You could also have:

  • a good command of the Dutch language, spoken and written;
  • an understanding or total recall of (several of the) Eurocodes;
  • worked on concrete and metal structures as well as foundations;
  • prior experience in our four key focus areas;
  • knowledge of scripting or programming with Python; and,
  • prior experience with LaTeX.

If you are currently not eligible to work in the Netherlands, please make sure you have an idea of what is required from you in order to obtain the relevant permissions, and include this in your application. Summum Engineering is a recognised sponsor with the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND).

Interested? Please send your motivation, CV and portfolio to Rik Rozendaal through careers@summum.engineering!

 

No recruitment agency contact regarding this vacancy please.

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