Mechanical Architect

We build heat pumps from the printed circuit board up and from the injection mould out. Both in-house. We have a product family in the field (Flint, Sparrow, Blackbird), the Swift is on its way, and behind it sits a platform that needs to scale across multiple generations. For that we don't need someone who designs one machine. We need someone who defines and guards the mechanical architecture underneath it, in conversation with heat loop & control, firmware, electronics, commerce and installer support. That's why we're hiring a Mechanical Architect. 

Where you'll land 

In Duizel, everything comes together: mechanical design, engineering, prototyping, testing and production. You work here every day close to the hardware and the real world, alongside engineers from heat loop and control, power electronics, firmware and acoustics. We run our own PCBA line, injection moulding, climate chambers and EMC lab. For a hardware company of around 150 people, that's exceptionally vertical, and it's exactly the playground where an architect makes the difference. 

Here, nobody separates design from manufacturability. Define an interface and you walk a few metres further to talk it through with the tool maker and your production colleagues. Propose a sensor position and that same afternoon you sit down with heat loop & control and firmware to check whether the control strategy can still cope. No ticket fired off to an external tool maker, no months of waiting for samples, no DFM report coming back with "not possible". We build it, together. 

An architectural choice becomes concrete fast: from CAD model to prototype in our own factory and climate chamber, often within days. You don't work on one heat pump, you work across the whole line: next generations of existing models and new products on the table today, including the Swift, a sloped-roof heat pump that opens a new category in the market. 

We are winner of the Nationale Ondernemersprijs (Dutch National Entrepreneurs Award) and certified by Kiwa, TÜV SÜD and ISO 9001. A platform choice you make this quarter sits in tens of thousands of homes two years from now. And what those units do in the field comes back as input for your next architectural generation. 

What you will do 

This is a hands-on architecture role: you define, you design, you simulate, you validate, and you industrialise. No handover forms. No consultants translating your sketch. You set up the system inside which the whole mechanical team works, and you build along with them. 

• Define the mechanical architecture of the platform: refrigerant circuit layout, frame, enclosure, acoustic build-up, hydraulic connections, ingress protection and serviceability. Consistent across the entire product family and consciously designed for multiple generations. 

• Use norms and compliance as a design force, not a final check. Translate EN 378, EN 60335-2-40, EN 14511/14825, EN 12102, PED, F-gas / R290 safety, ErP and EMC into concrete design rules, and continuously align them with what heat loop and control needs to run compliantly and safely (charge management, leak detection, ventilation zones, EXV response inside safe limits). 

• Design sensor positions, actuator choices and fault-detection observability together with heat loop & control engineers and firmware. Mechanics and control are designed together, not one after the other. 

• Set the thermal, vibration and EMC budget of the electronics enclosure together with power electronics and firmware. Lock down connectors, cable routing, sensor wiring and IP rating in a single, unambiguous specification. 

• Help build the Swift, a sloped-roof heat pump with its own architectural challenges: acoustic damping packages, sealings against every roof variant, and installation by installers on a roof. 

• Design, simulate (CFD/FEA) and validate in Siemens NX. Fingers on the keys, not only review from the sidelines. 

• DFM and tolerance stack-up: tolerance analyses, stack-up calculations and DFMEA together with Wefabricate, not after the fact. 

• Co-shape industrialisation: tooling choice, machining strategy, production automation, together with the tool maker and production colleagues. You design architecture for the line it will be built on. 

• Build the bridge to commerce and product: make the cost model per architectural choice transparent, consciously manage positioning headroom (dimensions, sound class, capacity band, refrigerant charge and what that implies for installation regulations), and deliver architectural input into the roadmap process. 

• Build the bridge to installer support: make sure installation footprint, serviceability, field-replaceable units and shared service interfaces work across the product family for installers in the field. 

• Coach and mentor mechanical engineers: lead design reviews, transfer design principles, help juniors grow into independence. 

• Translate field data from tens of thousands of units into architectural improvements on running production lines and on the next platform. 

What we offer 

• Architectural ownership of a platform that needs to scale across multiple generations and tens of thousands of installations. What you set down will soon sit in hundreds of thousands of Dutch and European homes. 

• Work with direct societal impact: cleaner heating, lower energy bills, less CO₂. 

• In-house manufacturing capability within walking distance: injection moulding, machining, climate chambers, EMC labs, our own production automation. You can validate an architectural decision today instead of waiting a quarter. 

• Multidisciplinary teams with short lines. You sit at the table with heat loop and control, power electronics, firmware, acoustics, commerce and installer support. Trade-offs are made explicit, not pushed down the line. 

• An international rollout that is just beginning: you are not building something that is already finished. 

• Bonus when we hit our targets. 

• Competitive salary in line with architecture level, top gear (laptop, phone) and short lines where you actually have a say. 

• A team of sharp colleagues that expects you to challenge them, celebrates wins, and aims higher every day. 

About Weheat 

Weheat is a fast-growing clean tech scale-up with a radical ambition: by 2030 we will have sustainably and intelligently heated 2 million homes across Europe. We will not get there with incremental steps. With us, the question is never "how can it be 10% better?" but always "how can it be 10x better?". 

We have fully re-engineered the heat pump, but our impact goes far beyond hardware. We invest heavily in R&D and see software as the key to our differentiation. Working at Weheat means choosing exponential growth. We are a flat organisation where colleagues challenge each other every day to step out of their comfort zone. That is exactly where real impact is made. 

This is you 

An architect who builds. You have made the move from engineer to architect: you don't make parts anymore, you define the system within which others make parts. But you still get your hands dirty. You get energy from technology close to the hardware and from in-house manufacturing that shows you the consequences of your choices the same week. Besides that: 

• Bachelor's or Master's in mechanical engineering, refrigeration technology, energy technology, mechatronics or comparable. What you have built counts more than where you studied. 

• 8+ years of experience in mechanical design of technical products, including at least one full product trajectory from concept to series production where you held architectural ownership or led the design. 

• Domain knowledge of heat pumps, chillers, AC systems or industrial refrigeration installations. 

• Fluent in the world of norms and compliance: EN 378, EN 60335-2-40, EN 14511/14825, EN 12102, PED, F-gas, ErP, MD and EMC. Able to translate those rules into what the mechanical design and the control strategy together must do. 

• Siemens NX (or equivalent), CFD/FEA and tolerance stack-up are second nature. You think in mould loads, assembly sequences and charge volumes, not just in renders. 

• Comfortable in conversation with heat loop & control engineers (superheat, EXV, PI/PID, charge management), firmware engineers (sensor topology, fault detection) and power electronics engineers (thermal management, EMC, IP). Architecture emerges in that conversation. 

• Strong trade-off mindset: you make explicit how a choice in mechanics propagates into cost, performance, sound, service time and compliance, and you facilitate that conversation with colleagues who are not mechanical engineers. 

• DfM, DfA, DfS and platform thinking are part of how you work. You design for the production line and for the next model, not just for this product. 

• You can think beyond engineering: cost-target discussion with commerce, installation-process review with installer support, roadmap conversation with product. It is normal for you that good design also makes commercial sense and is field-installable. 

• On-site in Duizel. You don't design architecture from home, and working alongside tool makers, controls engineers and production colleagues in the same room is at the heart of this role. 

Don't tick every box? Apply anyway. We look at architectural experience and thinking power, not at a checklist. Experience with acoustics and vibration, deep knowledge of injection moulding techniques, hands-on experience with R290, leadership inside a mechanical team or co-designing control strategies are all welcome, none of them required.