Trade Lead – Welding

Job Title: Trade Lead – Welding

Location: Barrow-in-Furness. Onsite.

Salary: £60,350+depending on skills and experience, plus car allowance and bonus

What you’ll be doing:

• Ensure employee health, safety and wellbeing in line with company policies

• Coordinate deployment of qualified personnel and manage resource demands

• Oversee efficient execution of trade teams via Delivery Managers

• Set standards for trade behaviours, knowledge, cost control, recognition and discipline

• Maintain training, skills, and safety awareness, including specialist capabilities

• Ensure delivery meets cost, quality, and efficiency targets

• Share learning, process improvements, and capabilities across the business

• Conduct regular quality and safety reviews/audits

• Drive continuous improvement in people, processes, equipment, and technology adoption

Your skills and experiences:

• Proven background in manufacturing, defence, or trade (welding knowledge essential)

• Time-served and respected Trade Manager

• Shipbuilding trade experience within a production environment

• Demonstrated success in middle management within large, complex organisations

• Understanding of compliance requirements and process management in regulated environments

• Proven leadership skills in managing teams within complex production settings

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 team:

Our NAS department is the primary manufacturing facility for steel, structures, and pressure hulls across all submarines. We handle everything from large-scale mega structures to smaller fabricated parts, using advanced welding and fabrication techniques. Working in a fast-paced, high-standard environment, we focus on quality, safety, and precision in every stage of manufacturing and construction. The team is responsible for managing all welding resources and niche skills — from training and development to deployment and implementation. We coordinate trade support to meet build requirements, ensuring trade capability is aligned with programme demands and that skills within the team continue to grow and evolve. We offer relocation support packages across all Submarines roles, subject to meeting eligibility criteria.

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 of thought, rewards integrity, and merit, and where you’ll be empowered to fulfil your potential. We welcome people from all backgrounds and 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: 19th September 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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