Summer Placement Supportability Engineer

Location: City of Edinburgh

Summer Placement Supportability Engineer

Leonardo Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Job Description

Are you ready to make an impact and gain hands‑on experience working on real‑world projects from day one?

At Leonardo, we’re looking for summer placement students who want to be part of something bigger—shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

Our placements are designed to help you apply your studies in a practical setting, develop your technical skills, and gain valuable insight into how our business operates.

Our Summer Placement Programme

Our 13‑week Summer Placement Programme gives you the chance to work on meaningful projects alongside subject matter experts, within multidisciplinary teams, and across the product lifecycle. Throughout your placement, you’ll receive coaching and support from a dedicated team, with the potential to return for future placements or progress onto our Graduate Development Programme.

The programme will run from 1st June to 28th August 2026.

We encourage you to spend at least three days each week on site to integrate with your team and maximise your learning experience.

What you’ll do as a Summer Placement Supportability Engineer

Supportability Engineers are integral to a product’s lifecycle from concept and initial design, through production, and into in‑service support.

They analyse and report on the Reliability, Maintainability and Testability (RMT) of a product and advise on design and development in order to satisfy customer specifications. Supportability Engineering are the experts in Root Cause Analysis and are integral during production when manufacturing defects are observed.

As a Summer Placement Supportability Engineer, you will contribute to a real ongoing project within the department alongside experienced engineers who will provide training, mentoring and guidance. You will be exposed to real‑world engineering and learn about the use of Supportability processes and tools.

In Edinburgh, Supportability Engineering are directly involved with

• IRCM (Infra‑Red Counter Measures) Systems
• Laser Target Designator and Laser Ranging Systems
• Eurofighter Typhoon Radar
• SAAB Gripen Radar
• Surveillance AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) Radars
• The Global Combat Air Programme

Examples of summer placement projects include

• Physics of Failure & Finite Element Analysis – an evaluation of Ansys Sherlock in addition to experience of other tools within Ansys suite
• Electronics Reliability Analysis - Evaluating Radar PCAs for Reliability, Maintainability, and Testability
• Lead Free & Materials Science – design, development and production support and interaction with engineers in a variety of functions and roles
• Data Analytics – producing reports using analysis from Production and Field Defect Data

What You’ll Bring

Entry Requirements

• Currently studying Aerospace, Electronics or Mechanical Engineering or related disciplines

Competencies we look for

• Strong communication skills, written and verbal
• Ability to solve technical problems
• Computer literacy (MS Office)
• Appreciation of the lifecycle of a product and electronic product design
• A passion for reliability and root cause analysis

Personal attributes

• Self‑motivated, enthusiastic, and able to use initiative
• Analytical with an eye for data
• Outgoing with a willingness to ask questions
• Collaborative and flexible in approach

Security Clearance

This role is subject to pre‑employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC). For more information and guidance please visit

Why join us

At Leonardo, our people are at the heart of everything we do, key contributors in shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

We offer a comprehensive benefits package that supports your wellbeing, learning and development, and work–life balance

• Time to recharge Our employees are entitled 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays. As a Summer Placement student you will receive this allowance…