Job Description

Melbourn Science Park nr Cambridge | 8 to 12 Weeks Start July/August 2026 | Paid

Ever spent hours trying to figure out why an experiment gave the "wrong" result?

Some people run the test again and hope for a different outcome.

You’re probably the sort of person who starts asking questions.

What changed? Why did that happen? What am I missing?

If that sounds familiar, keep reading.

This summer, you'll take ownership of a real engineering project at LEX Diagnostics, where your ideas, experiments and decisions can help move a product forward.

Not a theoretical university assignment. Not shadowing someone else’s work. Hands-on engineering: designing, building, testing, debugging, and improving the setups and methods that help us develop better medical device technology.

At LEX, we’re developing molecular diagnostic systems that aim to bring rapid, lab-quality PCR testing closer to patients.

What will you be working on?

The exact project will depend on your strengths and interests. You might work on questions such as:

• How can we design and build a fixture to measure the forces involved in fluidic control?

• How do different fluidic chamber geometries fill, vent, or behave during operation?

• How can we automate tests to understand how a device or subsystem performs?

• How can COMSOL or other modelling tools help us understand thermal behaviour and inform design decisions?

You might even pitch your own question to answer.

You'll be trusted to investigate problems, generate ideas, build solutions and test them.

One day you might be designing a fixture in CAD. The next, running experiments to understand why a system isn't behaving as expected. Then analysing data, identifying root causes and improving your design based on evidence. Each day, you’ll work alongside our team of world class engineers and scientists.

Requirements

Who are we looking for?

You could be studying:

• Mechanical Engineering

• Physics

• Manufacturing Engineering

• Bioengineering

• Biotechnology

• Chemical Engineering

• Applied Sciences

• Or another closely related technical discipline

More important than your degree title is how you approach problems.

You'll likely enjoy this internship if you:

• Naturally dive into the detail and question results rather than accepting them at face value

• Enjoy building, testing and improving things

• Take ownership of your work and follow problems through to a solution

• Can explain your thinking clearly and logically

• Want to work on something meaningful and make a genuine contribution

Bonus points if you've used:

CAD software to design parts, fixtures or assemblies

Programming or scripting tools to analyse data or automate tasks

Don't worry if you haven't done everything on the list. Curiosity, initiative and problem-solving ability matter far more than ticking every box.

Benefits

How to apply

Please include a CV if you have one, but no formal cover letter is needed. Instead, please provide a few paragraphs telling us:

• Who you are and where you are

• Why this opportunity interests you

• What you are studying

• Any projects, experience or skills you'd like to highlight

• What type of engineering work you enjoy most

• What you hope to gain from the internship

If you'd like, we'd also love to hear about the most interesting technical project you've worked on and what you learned from it.

We’re not looking for a polished application. We’d like to hear about you in your own voice. As a guide, we don’t expect you to spend more than around 30 minutes on this.

Ready to spend your summer solving real engineering problems?

Apply now and help develop technology that could make diagnostic testing faster, more accessible and more effective for patients everywhere.