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Location: Cheadle, United Kingdom
Thales is a global technology leader with more than 83,000 employees on five continents. With over 7,500 people in the UK, operating across defence, space, aerospace, and digital security, we help build a future we can all trust. Thales supports the security and stability of our nation by providing extraordinary technology to our customers, as well as delivering social value to the UK with our products and services.
Job title: Engineering Director UWS UK - (Requires UK SC clearance)
Location: Cheadle, Templecombe or Crawley
As the Engineering Director for Underwater Systems (UWS) UK you will be squarely focused on supporting the future growth of UWS UK through an unrelenting focus on delivering engineering outcomes that enable sustainable and highly effective performance. In addition, you will play a central role in accelerating our engineering transformation to deliver measurable improvements in the Engineering processes, including tooling (Lewis), strategic outsourcing (MoB&F), Engineering Delivery KPIs, driving efficiency, predictability and continuous improvement through effective use of data and engineering best practices.
Reporting directly to the UWS Operations Director, you will build strong relationships and engagement with key stakeholders across all functions and sectors, including UK COO, UK CTO, Domain MDs and Engineering Directors, Domain Operations Director, UK Engineering Director, UK Functional Leads and through partnering with Thales Romonia and Thales India Engineering Competence Centres (ECC).
What does the role offer you?
This is a highly visible role for Thales UWS UK, central to the achievement of forecasted revenues and our market ambitions, whilst also ensuring we support UK sovereignty and security in the Underwater battlespace. You will have the opportunity to significantly impact this through leading on the development of the UWS engineering strategy, operational excellence, driving capability and resilience through strategic resourcing and playing a central role in embedding a high-performance engineering culture, through effective engagement across Operations, CODIR and the UK Engineering board.
Key Dimensions of the Role
The role of UK Engineering Director is a broad one, offering leadership across a number of critical disciplines and activities including, but not limited to:
Strategic Leadership & Vision
- Develop, own, and lead the UWS Engineering strategy to align with UWS business objectives and UK/Group-level engineering TT2030 objectives.
- Strategically plan for the development of current and future technical capabilities across JF17-21 (for a direct perimeter of over 850 engineers).
- Lead the development and implementation of tactical and strategic resourcing plans to ensure business continuity and growth ambitions.
- Demonstrate thought leadership and implementation in end-to-end system design through to implementation and qualification.
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Operational Excellence
- Track, analyse, and drive improvement in engineering KPIs (including EEI and DOTD) to deliver a world class UWS engineering organisation, accountable to business objectives.
- Root and branch review of the engineering lifecycle to understand constraints and lead/sponsor specific interventions by programme to show data driven improvement in the process and the impact on outcomes.
- UWS Engineering Process Owner, aligning to DDQS Roadmap and ensuring clarity and minimum sufficient governance model.
- Define and maximize integration between engineering and other business functions to allow clarity and simplification of our End-to-End Processes.
- Hold accountability for engineering functional cost (£100M) and CAPEX (£4M), ensuring effective budget management and value delivery.
Programme Delivery & Assurance
- Collaborate closely with the UWS Business Sector Directors and key stakeholders to provide engineering delivery assurance across the lifecycle from bids, design, development, integration and acceptance.
- Ensure robust systems engineering discipline across requirements, architecture, verification, and validation.
- Champion and oversee priority programmes (e.g., Mission Centric Delivery, GenAI solutions, Lewis and MoB&F), ensuring successful and timely delivery.
- Utilize technical expertise to review and challenge engineering approaches for UWS’s most critical bids and programmes, including participation in key stage, gate, and peer reviews.
Governance & Stakeholder Engagement
- Work collaboratively with UWS Business Sectors to implement effective Engineering Governance and Organisation Principles.
- Engage regularly with executive stakeholders (UK Engineering Board, UWS Operations Team, UWS CODIR) to ensure alignment and performance.
- Represent UWS Engineering as the Lead on Thales UK Engineering Boards on all Engineering Pillars.
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Skills & Talent Development
- Lead and support UWS Engineering talent development initiatives, including the Engineering Talent Review Process with HR.
- Develop talent pipelines for key engineering technical and leadership roles.
- Drive initiatives to improve engineering capabilities and competencies across the function, promoting a high-performance and future-ready engineering team.
To be considered for this role, you must be able to demonstrate the following Minimum Valuable Experience (MVE):
- Successfully managed the delivery of large, complex engineering portfolios across the engineering life-cycle, including UK Domain Engineering leadership.
- Able to clearly demonstrate the development of a strong strategic vision that has successfully transformed engineering function(s) both through culture /behavioural change and technical capability development.
- Successful track record of working effectively across an environment with multiple stakeholders in a multi-disciplinary, multi-site, international context to achieve business objectives.
- Effectively managed Competence level budgets, operational plans and projects to ensure critical KPIs and functional metrics are fully achieved.
- Significant track record of managing large teams (perimeter of 200 + professional engineers), with evidence of leading function, team and individual capability development.
This role is open to UK Nationals only and requires Security Clearance UK EYES ONLY.
Closing date for applications is 3 Aug 2026.
1st stage assessments are planned to take place w/c 10 Aug
At Thales, we ensure equal opportunities, pay and working conditions for all. The benefits we offer include private medical insurance, buying or selling annual leave, cycle to work schemes, employee discounts, paid volunteering day, stocks and shares, annual bonus and much more depending on the role. Read more about our benefits here.
We are committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels valued for who they are and the unique strengths they bring. Discover more about our programmes, employee networks, wellbeing policies, and inclusive features here.
If this role isn’t quite right for you, we encourage you to join our talent community where your details will be shared with our recruitment teams for other potential opportunities. Join the Talent Community here.
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