Chief Engineer - UK Space Programmes

Engineering

London, Hybrid

To £100k + excellent benfits

About the Role

Seeking a thoughtful leader to represent the Chief Engineer’s office in the company’s

major UK satellite programmes. With customers demanding demonstration of new

low-cost capabilities on unprecedented timelines, this role will serve a critical

function in proactively shaping, guiding, and transforming the engineering team’s

approach to meet aggressive cost and schedule demands with creative technical

solutions. In addition, this critical role will require an expert that can serve as a key

interface with the overall Engineering and Technology organisation and lead issue

resolution within the programme.

The individual selected for this role will be responsible for:

 Leading technical decision-making processes and guide technical improvements

across all technical disciplines.

 Establish and Lead the UK Design Authority team.

 Establish and sustain strong customer relationship and rapport.

 Lead a diverse technical team.

 Delegate to engineering teams and supervise their progress.

 Lead technical reviews, engineering baseline establishment and configuration

management adherence.

 Identify technical issues and proactively implement resolution to mitigate schedule

and cost impact.

 Accomplish short and long range planning, establish goals, integrate within

established timelines and execute within schedule and budgets.

 Provide technical mentorship to team members.

 Champion corporate innovation and process improvement initiatives.

 Contribute to the company vision and strategy for sustained UK growth.

 Technical oversight and coordination of the engineering resources necessary to

evaluate and resolve issues, including coordination of external expertise.

 Setting the standard and expectations across space and ground segments to ensure

that the proper technical/cost/schedule/risk balance is delivered to the programme

and our customer.

Required skills, qualifications and experience

 BS, MS, or PhD in engineering or related discipline.

 Proven track record of successful technical management of space-related or

complex. technology programmes to include development, integration of subsystem

technologies, and production.

 Experience leading cross-functional teams to meet technical, performance, quality,

schedule and cost commitments.

 Proven ability to establish and maintain relationships with senior engineering

leadership and external customers at all levels with timely and accurate

communication.

 Strong risk management and problem solving skills, with experience in root

cause/corrective action.

 Demonstrated business acumen / awareness in shaping proposals and new

offerings.

 Demonstrated experience with relationship building, and personal acumen skills to

effectively influence change and thought leadership across multiple organisations.

 Demonstrated ability to collaboratively manage expectations, resolve conflict, and

set achievable results with internal and external stakeholders, spanning from

technical component and subsystem experts through senior management levels.

 Demonstrated experience with development, assembly/integration/test, readiness,

and/or operations of space systems.

 Demonstrated ability to successfully multi-task across portfolio demands.

 Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop technical talent.

 UK Citizen

 In addition to the standard pre-employment checks, the successful candidate must

also be able to achieve National Security Vetting at Security Check (SC) clearance

level prior to starting in this role and once in situ the ability to achieve Developed

Vetting (DV).

Desired skills:

 Extensive experience with multiple space subsystem technologies and

management of critical suppliers.

 Demonstrated experience and success supporting proposals and winning new

business.

 Expertise in contemporary design of spacecraft, payload and ground systems. 

 Experience leading teams or departments responsible for multiple space hardware

subsystems or systems. Experience with ground systems also a plus.

 Experience with procurement and management of supplier developed hardware to

include collaboration with enterprise subcontract management teams.

 Experience in the production of in-house fabricated products to include

collaboration with production, planning, and quality assurance organisations.

 Experience in a position responsible for making high stakes decisions.

 Experience in a production environment.

 Experience applying modern digital practices to creating technical solutions across

all engineering domains (mechanical, electrical, systems) and stages of the life

cycle (requirements, design, manufacturing and test).