Chief Engineer (Air

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Location:
Boscombe Down - three days per week on-site

Role Type:
Permanent – Full Time

Role

The Business Chief Engineer (Air) provides enterprise-level technical leadership across the Air business portfolio, ensuring the delivery of safe, compliant, assured and innovative engineering solutions aligned to customer requirements and QinetiQ strategic objectives.

The role holds delegated Engineering Delivery Authority and is accountable for engineering governance, technical integrity and through-life performance across all Air programmes, capabilities within scope.

• Enterprise-wide impact across a business unit or major portfolio.
• Influences delivery of complex, high-value and high-risk programmes.
• Impacts customer outcomes, regulatory compliance and company reputation.
• Leadership of multiple engineering disciplines and senior technical leaders.

1. Strategic Engineering Leadership

• Defines and executes engineering strategy within the business aligned to corporate and customer objectives.
• Translates organisational strategy into actionable engineering plans, investments, and capability development.
• Shapes future engineering direction, including adoption of new technologies, facilities, and methods.

• Acts as the senior Engineering Authority for the business portfolio, approving critical technical decisions, milestones, and deliverables.
• Provides authoritative direction on complex, high-risk or business-critical engineering activities.
• Leads First Line technical governance and assurance activities across the engineering lifecycle (LCM 1–4).
• Ensures engineering risks are proactively identified, assessed and mitigated.

• Accountable for engineering performance across all programmes within the portfolio, ensuring delivery to cost, schedule, quality, and safety requirements.
• Oversees technical bid quality, solution integrity and execution effectiveness.
• Drives continuous improvement in engineering delivery, processes and standards.
• Serves as the primary technical interface for senior customer stakeholders, regulators, and industry partners.
• Influences strategic decisions and builds trusted relationships at senior customer and executive level.
• Aligns engineering direction across business units and external partners.

• Contributes to the UK Defence Engineering Leadership Team, shaping organisational capability, workforce strategy and long-term skill development.
• Works with Heads of Capabilities and Professions to develop engineering standards, tools, IP, data management and methodologies.
• Fosters a high-performance engineering culture.
• Ensures all engineering outputs comply with regulatory, internal, and customer assurance requirements.
• Owns First line assurance of technical bids, systems, and solutions.
• Escalates critical engineering risks impacting safety, cost, or schedule to leadership teams.

• Approval of customer engineering deliverables, technical solutions and assurance outcomes.
• Approval of engineering bids, proposals and associated risks.
• Authority to appoint and assign:
• System Design Authorities (LCM 1&2)
• Technical Assurers (LCM 1&2)
• Technical Leads (LCM 1 to
  4)

• Provides regular reporting to the UK Defence Engineering Director on business performance, engineering delivery and risk.
• Reports to the Business Managing Director on progress against business objectives, engineering risks and delivery status.

• Extensive experience in senior engineering leadership roles within complex, regulated air engineering environments.
• Deep technical expertise with recognised authority in one or more air engineering disciplines.
• Proven track record of leading large-scale, high-risk programmes and delivery of MOD strategic outcomes.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder influence and decision-making capability at leadership team level.
• Comprehensive understanding of MOD Acquisition and Support Policy and approaches.
• Comprehensive understanding of engineering governance, assurance…