Stealth
Building in manufacturing
Founding engineer at an early-stage manufacturing startup. Heads-down, building.
Portfolio
London, UK — '26
Uko Tiidemann
Building in manufacturing.
Mechanical engineer turned manufacturing builder — Cambridge MPhil with Distinction, ex-Teledyne FLIR, four-time Estonian national sailing champion. Currently a founding engineer, building in stealth.
01 — About
Turning CAD, constraints and chaos into lines that ship.
I set up and ran assembly lines at Teledyne FLIR, deployed cosmic-ray scanners across the UK with GScan, and studied manufacture at the highest level at Cambridge. Now I'm building in manufacturing full-time.
First-class mechanical engineer from Manchester; MPhil in Industrial Systems, Manufacture & Management from Cambridge, with Distinction. I'm drawn to hard problems where the bottleneck is real and the feedback is physical.
- Based in
- London, UK
- Origin
- Estonia
- Cambridge MPhil
- Distinction
- Manchester BEng
- First Class
- On the water
- 4× National Champion
02 — Work
A decade spent making things, and making them faster.
GScan
Cosmic-ray muon tomography
CERN-founded deeptech imaging the insides of critical infrastructure — bridges, reactors — with cosmic-ray muon tomography; backed by Bolt founder Markus Villig. Promoted in six months. Built the company's first contractor field manual, standardised its planning tools, and was offered Head of Manufacturing.
Teledyne FLIR
Thermal imaging
Led a thermal-camera line industrialisation while running three more production lines. Rebuilt a robotic glueing cell — three fixtures down to one, zero changeover, defect rate halved, cycle time cut by more than half. Offered a plant-wide Lean/TPM role on return from Cambridge.
Neptune First
Sailing technology
Prototyped Trimsense — a sail-trim sensor measuring leech twist. Won a €100K national innovation award and drew interest from America's Cup teams.
Centrica Business Solutions
Industrial heat-pump and absorption-chiller research.
ITK Marine
International marine retrofits — led an exhaust-gas scrubber project at half the competitor's cost.
Alfa Yachts
Built and tuned a Matteo Polli E-44 — hydraulics, winches and electronics.
Along the way I co-built an AI-matchmaking app from zero with a fellow Estonian founder — matching people on character, not looks. That chapter's now closed; it taught me how fast things can move.
03 — Education
Studied at the places that take manufacture seriously.
University of Cambridge
MPhil — Industrial Systems, Manufacture & Management. Consulted for DAF Trucks, LPA, Universal Wolf and Cambridge Kinetics; thesis on trust in OEM–SME supply-chain data sharing; toured 25 world-class manufacturers including BMW, VW and Claas.
University of Manchester
BEng — Mechanical Engineering. Formula Student intake & cooling: +15% airflow, +10% power. Thesis: FEA of a naval superstructure under blast loading.
04 — Beyond the line
Most of what I learned about pressure, I learned on the water.
01
4× Estonian National Sailing ChampionRS Feva & 470 · ORC World and European Championship competitor
02
Cambridge Tuition ScholarshipAwarded by the Estonian Education Board
03
Engineering & science competition wins1st, TalTech Spaghetti Bridge · international mathematics & national physics champion
04
Oxford–Cambridge Varsity, winning crewStrategist, Cambridge University Yacht Racing Team
Let's build something physical.
Open to hard manufacturing problems — lines to design, scale, or fix. If the bottleneck is real, I'm interested.
LinkedIn ↗
Based in London, UK