Who we are and what we do 
 

What if you could work on something that you can’t test… but cannot afford to fail? That could have spent years on a submarine, is launched into outer space (where the temperature is below -250c); comes hurtling through the atmosphere, being heated up and shaken and then must work? Some challenge. 

That’s exactly what the team over of over 6,500 people at AWE do every day: delivering important work, in support of the most important mission – keeping the nation safe. 

We are the only nuclear defence laboratory in the UK; no one else can do what we do due to the capability and experience of our people and the nuclear site licences only we hold.

We have some of the most brilliant people, working on some of the most complex challenges – working with research equipment that can simulate the temperatures and pressures at the heart of the sun; that can x-ray through lead a metre thick; that use 3D printing – making things of impossible precision. 

There has never been a more exciting time to join AWE