Head of Sector Engineering and Technology

Job Title: Head of Sector Engineering and Technology

Location: Portsmouth Broad Oak. We offer a range of hybrid and flexible working arrangements – please speak to your recruiter about the options for this particular role.

Salary: Circa £90,000 depending on skills and experience plus executive benefits package

What you’ll be doing:

• Providing technical leadership and governance across the sector, ensuring robust product certification, assurance, and compliance with regulations
• Leading and managing technical authorities and design specialists, developing capability and supporting strategic delivery of the sector’s Integrated Business Plan (IBP)
• Overseeing and approving engineering cost centres, resource planning, and recruitment, ensuring the efficient use of skills across the sector
• Supporting business development activities by providing domain expertise for bids, partnerships, and customer engagement
• Chair Lifecycle Management (LCM) reviews and ensure the technical accuracy and quality of sector engineering estimates
• Representing the business at key industry events, trade shows, and technical forums, promoting the sector’s capabilities and innovations

Your skills and experiences:

• Proven experience in leading complex engineering programmes, ideally within the naval, defence, autonomy, rail, or nuclear sectors
• Detailed understanding of engineering governance, product certification, and assurance processes in highly regulated environments
• Strong knowledge of engineering planning, maturity, and lifecycle management, with the ability to oversee large-scale technical delivery
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with experience engaging at senior levels across customers, partners, and internal leadership teams
• Experience developing and delivering technical strategies and capability plans, supporting both legacy product support and future technology development
• Chartered Engineer (CEng) or equivalent, with a track record of managing multi-disciplinary engineering teams and driving technical excellence

Benefits:

As well as a competitive pension scheme, BAE Systems also offers employee share plans, an extensive range of flexible discounted health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits, including a green car scheme, private health plans and shopping discounts – you may also be eligible for an annual incentive.

The Underwater Battle Space and Autonomy team:

This is a fantastic opportunity to shape the future of next-generation autonomous systems and advanced underwater platforms in a high-profile and rapidly evolving sector at the forefront of underwater defence technology.

The Head of Sector Engineering and Technology is a strategic leadership position responsible for ensuring the technical excellence, governance, and capability development across the Underwater Battlespace and Autonomy sector.

You will oversee a diverse team of around 320 engineers, including System Design Authorities, Design Authorities, Technical Authorities, and Technologists, providing strategic technical leadership across all projects, products, and capability development within the sector.

Why BAE Systems?

This is a place where you’ll be able to make a real difference. You’ll be part of an inclusive culture that values diversity, rewards integrity, and merit, and where you’ll be empowered to fulfil your potential. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and particularly from sections of the community who are currently underrepresented within our industry, including women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ individuals.

We also want to make sure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. If you have a disability or health condition (for example dyslexia, autism, an anxiety disorder etc.) that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Please be aware that many roles at BAE Systems are subject to both security and export control restrictions. These restrictions mean that factors such as your nationality, any nationalities you may have previously held, and your place of birth can restrict the roles you are eligible to perform within the organisation. All applicants must as a minimum achieve Baseline Personnel Security Standard. Many roles also require higher levels of National Security Vetting where applicants must typically have 5 to 10 years of continuous residency in the UK depending on the vetting level required for the role, to allow for meaningful security vetting checks.

Closing Date: 25th March 2025

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

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