The Engineering Director/Manager plays a key leadership role in delivering growth to our Protection System (PRS) Business Line (BL). The person will lead a large team consisting of Engineering Delivery, System Engineering, IVVQ and Network/Infra/Cybersecurity discipline, responsible for ensuring that complex technical solutions and systems are delivered on time and to cost and quality.
The primary purpose of the role is to provide senior engineering leadership, governance and oversight including anticipating and mitigating risks and maximising opportunities related to the engineering delivery challenges of both bids and projects within the business sector.
Main Tasks & Responsibilities :
- Manages the Engineering Department staff and allocates teams to studies, bids and projects according to business needs. Ensures technical scope of work on bids and projects is performed in compliance with Group processes.
- Provides technical and engineering leadership to the engineering teams, ensuring coherent technical solutions are designed and delivered.
- Ensures appropriate engineering approaches, methodologies, tools and processes are applied in the development of solutions so that potential deviations are identified early and appropriate actions applied.
- Continually identifies and assesses critical expertise to ensure the Engineering Department is optimally staffed with the right mix of various skills and expertise levels to meet business needs.
- Responsible to work with discipline heads to establish a skills and competency roadmap for engineering maturity development that takes into account current and future strategic skills that differentiate Thales from its competitors.
- Set training / recruitment plans in line with Strategic Business Plan and loading forecast of bids and projects.
- Responsible for engineering related reports to different stakeholders (Engineering dashboard & KPIs, skills management & critical resource report, country engineering performance & support plan, etc.).
- Supervises self-funded R&D in compliance with business line agreements.
- Manage department budget within the Multi-Year Budget (MYB). Provides engineering inputs to MYB, Strategic Business Planning (SBP), Business Operation Reviews (BOR), etc.
Requirements (education & behavioural) :
- Master or Degree in Engineering or equivalent.
- At least 10 years of related engineering experience with minimum 8 years in leading and managing a sizeable engineering team with support of business development, pre-sales, and bid & projects activities.
- Customer focused and team player with strengths in the areas of team building, leadership communication, staff development, performance management and mentoring.
- Significant engineering experience from a complex Systems engineering organization with extensive knowledge of hardware and software sub-systems. Track record of delivering complex engineering projects.
- Ability to work in a multi-disciplined and multi-cultural environment with Suppliers, Thales Business Lines and Customers.
- A strategic thinker who confidently solves highly complex problems with informed, timely and decisive decision making.
- Strong commercial acumen underpinning technical excellence.
