Rapid Prototyping Engineer

Founded in 1948, Lely is committed to a sustainable, profitable, and enjoyable future in agriculture. Driven by the challenges faced by farmers and the needs of cows, we develop high-quality robots and data systems that improve animal welfare, flexibility, and productivity on dairy farms. Our mission is to support sustainable food production.

For more than 30 years, we have been a global leader in the sale and service of automated systems for successive generations of dairy farmers. Every day, we inspire our colleagues to offer customers innovative solutions and to be a reliable partner for long-term advice and support. With our state-of-the-art Lely Campus in Maassluis and a global network of dedicated Lely Centers offering customized sales and service, Lely is active in more than fifty countries.

Within the Future Tech Lab, you are the pioneer who brings ideas to life. You build and test prototypes that have the potential to fundamentally improve Lely's products and concepts. You work in a new, dynamic department that is still being developed, where speed, creativity, and strategic impact are key.   

You will combine research and engineering by developing both experiments and prototypes in the fields of hardware, software, and electronics. In short cycles, you will discover new possibilities, with processes that normally take months being realized in weeks. Your work will directly translate into strategic choices that help Lely move forward.   

This is what your working day might look like :

A typical workday might start with a discussion about a promising idea that has barely been developed. You ask critical questions, define the core hypothesis, and translate it into a concrete experiment. That same morning, you are in the lab building a sensor setup or configuring an embedded prototype. In the afternoon, you analyze the initial data, discover an unexpected deviation, and decide to adjust the design immediately. At the end of the day, you share your results with colleagues and advise whether this path should be explored further or not. Every day, you move between thinking and doing, between vision and validation.  

Your main responsibilities are:  

• Designing, building, and iteratively improving prototypes, with a focus on electronics, software, and integrated systems.  
• Conducting exploratory research into technologies, sensors, hardware, and software, including physics and data analysis.  
• Performing rapid prototyping and quickly substantiating opportunities, limitations, and risks based on experiments and data.   
• Setting up, configuring, and validating test setups.   
• Actively collaborating with colleagues in the field of electronics and software, sharing knowledge, and contributing critical thinking.  
• Documenting results and providing informed counterarguments, including concrete recommendations for next steps.  

You have a broad technical background and a curious mind that does not avoid unfamiliar challenges. You are comfortable with both software and electronics, understand the physics of sensors, and can analyze data and translate it into practical insights. You see uncertainty and incomplete information as starting points for discovery, not as obstacles.  

In addition, you bring the following:   

• Work and thinking level: Higher professional education or university education in Mechatronics, Computer Science, Embedded Systems, or a similar field. 
• Very comfortable quickly setting up Python & C++ concepts and analyzing data. 
• 3 to 7 years of experience in prototyping or a similar innovation environment.  
• A strong hands-on mentality and proven experience in building and testing prototypes. 
• In-depth expertise in at least one of the following domains: mechatronics, embedded systems, sensing, vision, AI/ML, robotics, or exploratory software engineering.  
• The ability to make sharp analyses, for example regarding the accuracy, performance, or reliability of systems, and to translate these into informed choices. 
• A critical, constructive attitude in which you ask questions about context and purpose, set priorities, and dare to advise when something has little added value.  
• Proactivity in identifying deviations or notable trends in data and taking the initiative to investigate these further. 

Working at Lely means contributing to sustainable progress within one of the most innovative organizations in the Netherlands. You help future-proof the agricultural sector – and we make sure you get all the space, tools, and support you need to do so.   

• An international working environment with opportunities for own initiative and entrepreneurship.   
• Excellent working conditions, including up to 8 weeks of vacation per year and a good pension scheme.   
• A salary within the scale of €5.000 and €7.100  gross per month, with opportunities to grow from your starting salary over time.   
• Good growth opportunities: you are in control of your development and can choose from various training courses through our Lely Academy, from personal development to job-specific training.   
• Our modern Lely Campus offers daily access to extensive sports facilities: an indoor gym, outdoor padel courts, outdoor basketball and volleyball court, table tennis, and table soccer. Join Hyrox workouts or sign up for personal training a nd challenge your colleagues during an active break.   
• Enjoy fresh coffee and tea from our own barista, with milk straight from our farm, as well as a healthy and affordable company restaurant.   
• A healthy work-life balance thanks to our hybrid work policy: you work at least three days a week on Campus, with flexible working hours and plenty of room to spend extra time on site (between 06:00 and 20:00).   
• A free shuttle bus will take you to and from the metro in Maassluis, so your workday starts and ends smoothly.   
• Successes need to be celebrated: from anniversaries to Christmas parties at Lely, we know how to do it! 

Recruitment & selection agency, consultancy, and/or staffing agency? 

We appreciate the interest, but we recruit all our candidates directly. We understand that as intermediaries, you want to present candidates for our great positions and contribute to our ambitions, but this is not how we have set up our recruitment process. This means that all unsolicited profiles offered on Lely vacancies will be treated as direct applications.