Systems Engineering Discipline Team Lead

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.

Under Water Systems (UWS)

Our purpose is to be the leading provider of underwater sensors and decision superiority, helping navies across the world keep our friends, families and all of us safe. We cover four sectors: Mine Counter Measures, Anti-Submarine warfare, Services and Future Capabilities.

The Role
As the Systems Engineering Discipline Team Lead, you will play a pivotal role in leading and uniting a high-performing engineering team around clear objectives, leveraging your skills as a coach and servant leader. You will drive best practices in systems engineering across multiple projects and products, ensuring excellence in engineering delivery, talent development, and the adoption of innovative technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Tailor and deploy discipline practices and tools (including digitization, automation, and data management) across projects and products.
• Drive the adoption of new technologies to enhance engineering practice.
• Foster knowledge sharing and capitalisation of best practices, building blocks, and estimating models.
• Promote and implement continuous improvement initiatives based on root cause analysis and problem solving.
• Provide coaching, skills management, career development, and effective team resourcing to meet operational demands.
• Perform technical reviews related to discipline expertise for bids, products, and projects.
• Engage Subject Matter Experts in coaching and training, ensuring continuous development of the team.
• Developing engineering capability within the Submarine domain to meet future growth.
• Creating a robust talent pipeline to remove single point failures and ensure adequate knowledge transfer.
• Identifying pragmatic approaches to problems—sometimes implementing innovative solutions rapidly to meet customer needs.
• Making effective and efficient use of technology and available resources.
• Leading process tailoring to ensure efficient, pragmatic, and measurable programme delivery with the right level of risk.

About You (Key Competencies and Skills)

• Proven ability to empower and unite employees as a coach and servant leader, fostering a “team first” culture.
• Substantial knowledge of systems engineering, including holistic system analysis and understanding of component interrelations within larger systems.
• Strong expertise in requirements definition through performance analysis, trade studies, constraint evaluation, and cost/benefit analysis.
• Competence in Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and architecture development.
• Familiarity with IVVQ (Integration, Verification, Validation, Qualification), R-A-M-T (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Testability), and related standards.
• Continuous improvement mindset with strategic vision, ready to integrate and anticipate environmental dynamics.
• Experience with Lean Management and application of Agile principles (Scrum and/or Kanban) to manage and develop teams.
• Nice to have: Specific domain, product, or project experience

UK Eyes Only:

Due to the nature of the work that we do at Thales, many of our roles are subject to security restrictions.  This role requires you to be a UK National and achieve Security Clearance (SC) without any caveats. It would be advantageous if currently held, however, if not currently held, it is a requirement that the successful applicant undergo, achieve, and maintain SC Clearance prior to commencing employment.  If approved by the MOD, a dual national from a non-ITAR country may be considered. 

To be eligible for full SC, you generally need to have resided in the UK for the last 5 years.  In some circumstances, a minimum of 3 years’ residence in the UK over the last 5 years may be accepted, with additional overseas checks.

Please visit the UKSV website for further guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels/national-security-vetting-clearance-levels.

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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.

Join Thales in the UK – Innovate with us and shape the future!