Engineering Specialist

Job Summary:

The Engineering Specialist supports and maintains the teaching laboratory equipment and facilities, provides equipment and safety training to teaching assistants and students, and provides oversight to student projects involving experimentation or construction.

In addition, the Engineering Specialist uses engineering principles to design and build new laboratory equipment and experiments, adapt new equipment to existing experiments, upgrade existing equipment and facilities, and provide engineering support to student projects.

Nature of work:
Reports to the Manager, Technical Services

Responsibilities/accountabilities:

Support Undergraduate Laboratories

• Maintain and support undergraduate teaching labs, engineering student design labs and common shared laboratory facilities with the help of other technical staff in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
• Train teaching assistants, staff and faculty on the safe use of the equipment and maintain training records
• Participate in safety inspections, lab tours, open houses and engineering accreditation
• Troubleshoot computer hardware problems and create security policies on computers
• Troubleshoot data acquisition problems, computer networking and streaming server issues and audio/visual/multimedia equipment in the Faculty
• Calibrate laboratory equipment
• Perform scheduled preventative maintenance and write maintenance reports

Ensure Safety of Laboratories

• Perform checks on facilities, safety equipment
• Train teaching assistants and students on safety principles
• Set up safety quizzes for labs
• Enforcing safety standards and regulations in labs
• Participate in health and safety inspections

Laboratory Enhancements

• Identify opportunities for improvement in current lab delivery
• Develop and implement projects to improve lab delivery
• Update equipment manuals
• Update safety manuals
• Update lab manuals
• Make laboratory equipment purchase recommendations to faculty members in the area of responsibility

Support Students in Undergraduate Projects

• Provide guidance on engineering principles
• Provide support for material acquisition
• Provide support for techniques (electronics, electrical, programming and mechanical)

Recruitment

• Support displays for open houses
• Participate in tours, special engagements etc.
• Support photo and video shoots