Chief Engineer

Job Role: Chief Engineer

Rate: £650 - £750 a day inside ir35

Location: Hampshire (2-3 days a week)

Contract: 6 Months +

Security Clearance: Level DV required

Level DV security clearance is required for this role

I am recruiting a Chief Engineer for a client of mine who are a systems integrator operating within the UK defence sector. The Chief engineer should be highly innovative and versatile. The successful candidate will have a full understanding of the principles of system engineering.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborates with the Chief Engineer/Deputy Chief Engineer on all engineering effort:
• Resource Management for engineering disciplines
• Application of engineering best practice and standards, and use of appropriate governance to ensure control and visibility over scope of delivery
• Technical customer requirements - discovery and analysis of requirements. Production of impact assessment and estimates against customer-provided specifications
• Solution derived requirements, design and approach
• Project management items; technical measures, constraints, risks, technical deliverables, assumptions, dependencies. Own and plan the engineering effort for their aspect of the programmes.
• Reviews the proposed technical solution and approach with the purpose of establishing and managing an overall technical baseline for his aspect of the programme. They take ownership of the work products and plans from the proposal and perform the following additional items:
• Define the technical organisation and the lines of business to request the necessary resources (people and material)
• Execute the engineering effort.
• Communicates the technical plans and assignments to all members of their technical teams and sub-contractors
• Establish the technical sub-teams based on the agreed organisation structure
• Direct implementation of the technical management plans, manage day-to-day operation of the technical engineering teams, coordinate engineering efforts for his aspect of the programme, coordinate subcontractor efforts, and conduct technical exchange meetings.
• Manage engineering analyses, trade studies, prototype development and test.
• Coordinate with configuration management to ensure configuration control of the system design, system elements, technical documents, and other technical artefacts in accordance with agreed processes.
• Monitor, assess and control the engineering effort
• Monitor and assess technical progress against objectives and plans by collecting and analysing metrics, reviewing work products, obtaining formal and informal briefings, managing the technical budget, and assessing system performance, etc. Track and assess progress against cost and schedule. Report status to the PM.
• Manage their environments for system development, integration, verification, validation, and the process asset library to ensure continued suitability and access to any required enabling systems or services.
• Work with the Chief Engineer to ensure there is a suitably agreed technical review plan, ensuring timely execution of technical reviews, audits, and inspections
• Develop, initiate, document, and track corrective actions to address technical performance issues or other problems and prevent issues from recurring. Report status of corrective actions to the PM and Chief Engineer. If necessary, re-plan effort in coordination with the PM.
• Employ the agreed PMO processes to prevent issues when assessments indicate a negative trend, e.g. risk management.
• Coordinate, as appropriate, to initiate engineering change requests. Change requests may contain resource and material basis of estimates.
• Manage technical contract deliverables and milestone reviews
• Plan and direct the preparation, internal review, and customer delivery of contract deliverables.
• Plan and direct the preparation, internal review, and delivery of required support documentation.
• Plan and direct the preparation of the technical content of milestone reviews.
• Plan, schedule, and lead technical milestone reviews. Ensure all action items are recorded and assigned to the appropriate teams or individuals for disposition.
• Track and manage the closure of review action items and customer-requested revisions to contract deliverables
• Document and maintain the outputs of the process
• Conduct peer reviews on project outputs of this process as defined by the project.
• Obtain approval of technical process outputs from internal and external stakeholders as defined in the project's plans.
• Control changes to work products and store records as defined in the project's configuration management plan.

Required Skills:

• Demonstrated experience in implementing all stages of the systems engineering lifecycle across their programmes within a portfolio.
• The ability to communicate at all levels about high level architecture as well as the low level design layers.
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills with ability to interact at all levels from engineers to executives
• An ability to understand and translate customer needs and expectations
• Understanding of various system development methodologies
• Ability to lead, encourage and influence cross functional and multi-location teams
• Ability to define new strategies and processes, driving these through to their implementation
• Experience of working with multiple suppliers and stakeholders
• Confidence to work independently and within a fast-paced team
• Experience of delivering systems and solutions within the context of service orientated architectures and associated service management solutions (people, process, governance & technology)
• ITIL experience