Why this course?

For many, the perfect way to combine a passion for sport and technology is through a career in sports engineering.

Sports design engineering concentrates on the conception, design and manufacturing of sporting equipment. Sports engineers work in nearly every sport, creating designs that meet specialised specifications to improve athlete performance, safety and sports product durability.

For example, sports engineers could be involved with projects as diverse as designing new high specification football boots or fitness monitoring and improvement products, match and playing surface analysis equipment to developing image processing algorithms which act as analytical tools to determine strategic instances in a game.

The background our students gain in biomechanics also makes careers in medical device development and design a viable career route which is an exciting area due to the new and emerging sports and widening participation in sports for example prosthetics and guidance for partially sighted.

A sports design engineer requires expertise in many technical skills from engineering design to understanding biomechanics of human movement, technology concepts to production techniques. This is integrated with manufacturing processes, CAD, rapid prototyping and digital prototyping technologies, software and practical skills to turn the design and production process into reality which is fundamental to global market success.

Careers

Sports design engineering is a constantly growing area, as people look to technology to improve performance. Someone with the right skills and qualifications should have a wide variety of role opportunities ahead of them.

As a sports design engineer, you can be involved in almost every aspect of the product journey, from the initial concept, design, development, testing and management of projects to the manufacturing. Sports engineers use technical knowledge, problem-solving skills and a passion for designing and refining the usability of luxury to everyday sports equipment, across a diverse range of brands and companies.

Roles may have responsibilities such as:

• Project ownership from conceptual phase through to sign off
• Body packaging, concept studies and detailed design of new products
• Build support, prototype and production
• Solutions development in 3D solids and/or finished surface models from digital scan data, physical samples and technical drawing packages
• Creating engineered solutions to develop existing products in CAD software
• Coordinating design work to deliver timely design releases meeting all design for manufacture input from suppliers
• Designing components to the lowest feasible weight, or to cheaper manufacturing costs
• Quality control of product manufacture

Work experience is highly desirable for graduates applying within the sports design engineering industry, to best demonstrate their team working abilities, skills and portfolio breadth. Our students truly benefit from the industrial group project which is integrated into their degree, to provide them with this necessary experience to stand out when competing for graduate jobs. Furthermore, many of our students gain placements and internships throughout their studies to advance their professional development ahead of graduation.

Companies return year-on-year to recruit from our department, and specifically, companies such as Adidas, PUMA, Rolls Royce, Dyson and Jaguar Land Rover have our graduates covering a plethora of roles across their teams. Some of our graduates go on to graduate trainee programmes with companies such as Diageo, Accenture, Unilever and Procter & Gamble.