Machine Shop Operative in West Sussex

Location: Storrington, West Sussex
Salary: £28,000 - £30,000
Hours: Monday to Friday
Contract: Permanent

If you’ve already got experience working around machinery and want a role where you can broaden your skills, learn new processes and build a longer-term career in engineering and manufacturing, this could be a really good move.

We’re recruiting for a Machine Shop Operative to join a specialist engineering manufacturer in Storrington.

This isn’t a basic production role where you’ll spend every day doing exactly the same thing. The Machine Shop supports a much wider engineering operation, producing and preparing components used within highly technical manufactured products.

There’s a good amount of variety across the department, and depending on your existing experience, you’ll have the opportunity to develop across different machinery and processes.

Your day-to-day work could include:

• Setting and operating production machinery
• Working with press brake machinery
• Operating punch press equipment
• Waterjet cutting
• Lamination processes
• Brushing, finishing and preparing components
• Washing manufactured parts
• Loading and unloading machines
• Changing tooling and carrying out basic machine setups
• Following job sheets, drawings and manufacturing instructions
• Completing dimensional and quality checks
• Making basic machine adjustments
• Supporting routine machine care and maintenance
• Working closely with the wider production and assembly teams

You won’t need experience across every machine or process listed above.

What matters most is that you’re already comfortable working in a manufacturing or engineering environment, understand safe working around machinery and have the practical ability to learn new processes.

We’d be interested in speaking with people from backgrounds such as:

• Machine operating
• CNC operating
• Sheet metal
• Press brake
• Punch press
• Waterjet
• Fabrication
• Engineering production
• General manufacturing

Experience with any of the following would be particularly useful:

• Setting or adjusting machinery
• Changing tooling
• Basic machine setup
• Reading job sheets or engineering drawings
• Measuring and checking finished components
• Basic fault-finding
• Routine machine maintenance
• Working to quality and production standards

You don’t need to be a qualified machinist or CNC programmer.

A practical mindset, good attention to detail and a willingness to learn are far more important.

This is a chance to join a well-established specialist engineering business with a large manufacturing site and a strong focus on training and development.

Rather than being limited to one machine or one process, there’s scope to build experience across different areas of the Machine Shop and develop into more skilled manufacturing work over time.

The business produces components for highly technical applications, so the work has a bit more substance and variety than standard high-volume production.

It’s also a good opportunity for someone who wants somewhere they can settle, develop their skills and build a longer-term career.

If you’ve got machine operating, engineering or manufacturing experience and want to take the next step, apply and we’ll have an initial conversation about your background and the opportunity.