Chief Engineer

Job Title: Chief Engineer - UK Space Programmes

Location: Harwell/London/Oxfordshire/Hybrid

Salary: £DOE - We are booking interviews next week! Please call or email for a slot

About Us:

At the dawn of a new space age, my client is a pioneer, partner, innovator and builder. Their amazing men and women are on a mission to make a difference in the world and every day they use their unique skills and experiences to create, design and build solutions to some of the worlds' hardest engineering problems. Their culture encourages employees to dream big, perform with excellence and create incredible products. They provide the resources, inspiration and focus and if you have the passion and courage to dream big, they want to build a better tomorrow with you.

They build satellites, ground stations and spacecraft that do amazing things in the space domain for government and commercial customers. My clients' capabilities and services give earlier warning of severe weather, connect troops on the battlefield, and deliver GPS directions to a billion people worldwide. They also design smarter satellites that operate like smartphones in the sky, with apps that can be updated in orbit so they can adapt as mission needs on the ground change.

The Role:

So, what will you be doing as a Chief Engineer?

Seeking a thoughtful leader to represent the Chief Engineer's office in my clients 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 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.

What are we looking for in our next Chief Engineer?

• 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).

***PLEASE NOTE***

Security Clearance (SC) or eligibility to gain is required to be considered for this vacancy

Services advertised by Gold Group are those of an Agency and/or an Employment Business.
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