Obsolescence Manager

Location: Huntingdon, UK
Clearance level: High - (DV) Developed Vetting

UNLEASH YOUR POTENTIAL

As the QDC Portfolio Obsolescence Manager, encompassing the three service elements, you will act as the focal point for portfolio-level obsolescence management, ensuring lifecycle risks are identified, assessed, managed, and reported in accordance with the principles of BS EN IEC 62402:2019 and ITSM good practice.

The QDC Portfolio Obsolescence Manager will be accountable to the Chief Engineer for ensuring that obsolescence risks, issues, and opportunities are captured, assessed, escalated, and governed through the appropriate portfolio, programme, service-management, and change-control routes. The role will also liaise with Architecture, Engineering, ITAM, Service Configuration Management, and Service Design stakeholders to ensure that new or changed hardware, software, firmware, applications, and third-party components are considered against the agreed Obsolescence Management strategies, Obsolescence Management Plan, and service lifecycle requirements.

You will proactively identify items that are obsolete, approaching end-of-life, end-of-sale, end-of-support, or otherwise at risk of reduced availability, supportability, maintainability, compliance, or service continuity. You will assess and communicate the associated operational, cyber-security, commercial, contractual, and service risks, producing evidence-based customer reports that support clear decisions on risk acceptance, residual-risk treatment, or funded remediation. You will work closely with the wider portfolio, including Commercial, Finance, PMO, IT Asset Management, Service Configuration Management, Core Service, Security/Cyber, Service Architecture, Agile Change teams, suppliers, and wider Engineering entities, to identify, assess, prioritise, and resolve lifecycle and obsolescence risks throughout the asset, configuration item, service, and system lifecycle.

The role is based on a customer site near Huntington (3-4 days per week), with travel to other customer sites and the Leidos Farnborough office.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop, implement, maintain, and continually improve an Obsolescence Management Plan (OMP) aligned to the Obsolescence Management Policy, contractual obligations, regulatory requirements, customer outcomes, service-management controls, and BS EN IEC 62402 principles.
• Identify, assess, classify, and monitor obsolescence for configuration items and technology assets, including hardware, software, operating systems, firmware, applications, infrastructure components, and third-party products, using lifecycle intelligence such as vendor roadmaps, end-of-life notices, end-of-support dates, and support-policy changes.
• Maintain obsolescence registers, lifecycle records, configuration and asset data, risk assessments, treatment plans, decision records, and residual-risk positions, ensuring defined ownership, review cadence, governance, and timely escalation of critical risks.
• Perform obsolescence impact assessments for obsolete or at-risk items, including service impact, dependency and compatibility constraints, security exposure, availability and maintainability implications, compliance considerations, workaround requirements, and operational support consequences.
• Lead and coordinate obsolescence mitigation and resolution strategies such as last-time buys, alternative sourcing, approved substitutions, upgrade paths, redesign, requalification, repair solutions, extended-support agreements, risk treatment, or service re-architecture.
• Work with Engineering, Architecture, and Design teams to identify and validate replacement options (form-fit-function replacements, approved alternatives, or modern equivalents), including compatibility, security, supportability, and service impact.
• Define replacement and remediation recommendations with an implementation view, including change category, implementation steps, prerequisite changes, testing and validation needs, release and deployment considerations, service-transition impact, and high-level effort or cost drivers to support funded-change decisions.
• Engage with suppliers to understand product lifecycle status, roadmaps, and end-of-life notifications.
• Support programme bids, cost models, and business cases by providing obsolescence impact assessments.
• Facilitate customer and portfolio decision-making by presenting options for risk acceptance, risk treatment, residual-risk ownership, and funded remediation; maintain traceability of decisions, approvals, assumptions, controls, and agreed actions.
• Ensure compliance with customer, contractual, and regulatory requirements related to obsolescence management.
• Provide customer-facing reporting packs (e.g. monthly/quarterly) showing obsolete/at-risk products, affected locations/services, risk ratings, support implications, and recommended actions.
• Contribute to continual improvement of obsolescence-management processes, lifecycle-data quality, service-management controls, reporting packs, governance forums, and toolsets.
• Provide technical assurance on packaging/installation standards (approved versions, dependencies, hardening, and supportability) so remediation actions do not introduce new lifecycle or security risk.
• Assess and communicate the impact of proposed changes through the change enablement lifecycle, including compatibility, regression and validation needs, support status, configuration baseline impact, release and deployment considerations, and downstream service impact, providing inputs to CAB or the relevant Change Authority as required.