Candidate record
Elias Brandt
Mechanical engineering graduate in Eindhoven, looking for a first role somewhere that actually makes things. I would rather measure than guess.
- Programme
- BSc Mechanical Engineering
- Classification
- Cum laude · 8.1 / 10
- Graduated
- June 2026
- Based in
- Eindhoven, Netherlands
- Looking for
- Graduate role, production or product
In figures
Four years, added up
Not a summary of ambitions. These are things that were counted.
Two internships, both hands-on
Graduated cum laude, 8.1 weighted
Two seasons with a student racing team
CSWP, TIG, VCA and a driving licence
About
Why I want to make things
The short version of a longer story, in my own words.
Dear reader,
I took a bicycle apart when I was eleven and could not get it back together, which annoyed me for about six years. That is genuinely why I studied mechanical engineering, and it is still the part of the work I like best: the moment a thing that was drawn becomes a thing you can pick up.
Four years in, what I have learned about myself is that I am not the fastest at analysis and I am not the most creative in a concept meeting. What I am is careful. I measure things other people assume. In my second internship I spent a week timing an assembly station because nobody had, and the number turned out to be a third larger than everyone believed. The fixture that followed was the easy part.
I keep a logbook of every part I have made, with the mistakes in it. Sixty-one entries so far. I would like the next few hundred to be made somewhere that builds a product it is proud of, beside people who will tell me when I am wrong.
Experience
Where I have worked
Two internships, a student racing team and a workshop job, pulled live from my CV.
Experience
Feb 2025—Jun 2025
Test engineering intern — Kade Windtechniek
Feb 2024—Jul 2024
Production engineering intern — Vanderpol Cycles
Sep 2024—Jun 2026
Mechanical design member, front corner — Team Meridian solar car
Sep 2023—Jun 2024
Workshop assistant — Dommel Institute of Technology
Education
The transcript
The degree, the modules that mattered most to the work I want to do, and what they came to.
Dommel Institute of Technology
Eindhoven, Netherlands
BSc Mechanical Engineering
- Years
- 2022 - 2026
- Result
- Cum laude
Final project
A repeatable welding jig for small-batch bicycle frames
Built and tested in the department workshop. It held alignment inside 0.4 mm across thirty frames, and it is still in use. Graded 9.0.
Skills
What I can do on day one
Listed at the level I would be comfortable being tested on, not the level I would like to be at.
Design and analysis
- SolidWorks, four years daily
- GD&T and tolerance stacks
- Ansys Mechanical, static and modal
- Design for assembly and manufacture
- Technical drawing to ISO
Making and measuring
- Manual turning and milling
- TIG welding, steel and aluminium
- Fixture and jig design
- Dial gauges, calipers, surface plate
- Injection moulding trials
Test and data
- Strain gauges and load cells
- Data acquisition and logging
- Python and pandas for test data
- Writing a test protocol
- Reporting a result honestly
Projects
Eight things I have built
Coursework, two internships, a student racing team and one made in my own workshop. Each one says what I was responsible for.
How I work
What a team gets
The same four steps whether it is a jig, a test rig or a bracket. It is not clever, but it is repeatable.
Before anything is drawn
Understand the constraint
Who makes it, on what machine, to what tolerance, and by when. Half the bad designs I have made came from skipping this and assuming I already knew.
A day, usually
Measure what everyone assumes
There is nearly always one number the team believes but nobody has checked. I go and get it. It has changed the brief more than once.
One to two weeks
Build the simplest version that can fail
A rough prototype that can be broken teaches more than a refined model that cannot. I would rather find the problem in week two than in the report.
As I go, not after
Write down what actually happened
Every part I have made has a logbook entry with the mistakes in it. Sixty-one so far. It is how the next one gets better, and how a colleague can pick the job up without me.
References
What they said
Three people who supervised me. Full contact details on request.
Elias asked to time the station himself rather than take our number for it. That is not a normal thing for an intern to do, and the fixture he built off the back of it is still running. We would take him back.
He turned up in a test department knowing very little about composites and left having rebuilt our clamping fixture. Careful with instrumentation, honest about uncertainty, and he does not oversell a result.
One of the few students who takes a design back to the technician before it is finished rather than after. His final project was the best-documented in the year group.
On the record
Certifications and competitions
The things somebody else signed.
Practical
The things recruiters ask first
Answered here so neither of us has to spend an email on them.
When can you start?
Would you relocate?
Do you need a visa?
What kind of role are you actually looking for?
You have no full-time experience. Why should we take the risk?
What are you not good at yet?
The whole record, in two pages
Experience, education, skills, certifications and languages - kept up to date here and generated as a PDF you can put in front of a hiring manager.
Contact
Write to me
I read everything myself and I answer every message, including the ones that say no.
If you are hiring, the useful things to tell me are what the product is, who I would sit with and what the first six months look like. I will reply within two working days.
Received. I read everything myself and reply within two working days.