Leonardo
Senior Application Engineer (Mission Critical)
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Job Description
Salary Range: £44,171 - £61,950
Leonardo UK operates a grade-based salary framework with broad bands. The salary range shown reflects the approved grade band for this role, or a narrower hiring range published within that band, and is benchmarked against the external market. Exceptions above the standard range are managed through governance controls to protect internal equity.
Your Impact
Are you ready to support and enhance enterprise applications that underpin national security and critical services? At Leonardo UK, our Senior Application Engineers play a key role in maintaining and improving business-critical platforms — ensuring they are secure, scalable, and aligned with operational needs. You’ll work collaboratively across engineering and service teams, contributing to technical delivery and continuous improvement.
Your work at Leonardo UK will see you take the lead in solving customer problems in an agile, innovative and team-centric manner. The role may involve a blended hybrid working model, with a mixture of working from home and working on site at one of our Leonardo offices to ensure close collaboration with the wider team and with our customers.
Leonardo UK is seeking a Senior Application Engineer to join the Cyber & Security Solutions Division team. This role is focused on delivering, maintaining, and improving platform and systems engineering solutions that underpin critical defence, government and public sector services.
What you will do as a Senior Application Engineer
- Support, configure, and enhance the Leonardo MCX suite of applications, ensuring reliable operation within mission‑critical communication environments.
- Deliver engineering tasks within defined work packages, ensuring alignment with user needs, operational communication requirements, security requirements, and service-level objectives.
- Contribute to application architecture, configuration, integration, and lifecycle activities under the guidance of senior engineers.
- Collaborate with stakeholders across engineering, service management, and product teams to resolve technical issues.
- Mentor junior engineers and specialists, supporting their development and promoting best practices.
- Participate in continuous improvement initiatives, including automation, documentation, and knowledge sharing.
- Ensure compliance with engineering governance, ITSM processes, and cyber security policies.
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What you’ll bring
- Solid experience in supporting, configuring, and enhancing enterprise or mission‑critical applications, ideally within telecoms, control rooms, or public‑safety communications environments.
- Ability to solve moderately complex application-related issues and contribute to secure, scalable solutions in high‑availability operational settings.
- Understanding of application lifecycle management, integration patterns, and secure-by-design principles.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills across engineering, service management and product teams.
- A proactive mindset with a passion for continuous improvement and knowledge sharing.
Core areas (must have)
- Mission‑Critical Application Experience: Hands-on experience supporting or configuring operational telecoms systems, public‑safety applications, control room tools, or enterprise‑grade software.
- Application Lifecycle Knowledge: Understanding of deployment, maintenance, upgrades, and decommissioning phases.
- Integration & Identity Management: Familiarity with integration patterns and identity systems such as Open ID connect and OAuth
- Secure-by-Design Principles: Awareness of cyber security practices and secure configuration.
- Service Management Alignment: Understanding of ITIL or similar frameworks.
- Technical Problem Solving: Ability to resolve moderately complex issues and contribute to service improvement.
- Collaboration & Communication: Strong communication skills across engineering, service, and product teams.
Desirable
- Experience with mission‑critical communication platforms, public‑safety dispatch systems, TETRA technologies, or telecoms signalling protocols.
- Experience supporting applications across on-premise, hybrid, and cloud environments (e.g. AWS).
- Exposure to MCX / MCPTT, control‑room platforms, or emergency services communication systems.
- Familiarity with Jira Service Management or other ITSM tooling.
- Knowledge of enterprise IT services such as Active Directory, KMSPKI, and monitoring tools.
- Exposure to DevOps or CI/CD practices.
- Industry certifications (e.g. Atlassian,, ITIL, AWS, Azure).
- Awareness of 3GPP technical standards.
- Experience working in secure or defence-related environments.
Security Clearance
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This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV). For more information and guidance please visit https://careers.uk.leonardo.com/gb/en/security-and-vetting
Location
This role can be based at our Bristol site, with hybrid/custom working options where appropriate. Travel will be involved in the role.
Why join us
At Leonardo, our people are at the heart of everything we do. We offer a comprehensive, company-funded benefits package that supports your wellbeing, career development, and work–life balance.
- Time to Recharge: Generous leave with the opportunity to accrue up to 12 additional flexi-days each year.
- Secure your Future: Award-winning pension scheme with up to 15% employer contribution.
- Your Wellbeing Matters: Free access to mental health support, financial advice, and employee-led networks.
- Never Stop Learning: Free access to 4,000+ online courses via Coursera and LinkedIn Learning.
- Tailored Perks: Spend up to £500 annually on flexible benefits such as private healthcare, lifestyle discounts, and gym memberships.
- Flexible Working: Flexible hours with hybrid working options.
For a full list of our company benefits please visit our website.
Leonardo is a global leader in Aerospace, Defence, and Security. Headquartered in Italy, we employ over 53,000 people worldwide including 8,500 across 9 sites in the UK. Our employees are not just part of a team—they are key contributors to shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.
At Leonardo we are committed to building an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming workplace. We believe that a diverse workforce sparks creativity, drives innovation, and leads to better outcomes for our people and our customers. If you have any accessibility requirements to support you during the recruitment process, just let us know.
Be part of something bigger - apply now!
Primary Location
GB - Bristol - Coldharbour Lane
Contract Type
Permanent
Hybrid Working
Hybrid
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