Design Engineering Senior Manager

Overview

In this senior role, you will lead a multi-disciplinary design engineering team to advance Zephyr, AALTO’s stratospheric platform. You will align engineering strategy with certification goals, oversee design and analysis across mechanical, electrical, and structural domains, and drive performance, cost, and schedule across programs. You’ll mentor technical leaders, foster a culture of technical excellence, and partner with regulators to ensure airworthiness and safety. This is a chance to shape a pioneering, cross-functional effort in Stratospace.

Pay / Benefits

• short-term incentive plan
• 25 days holiday
• private medical insurance, dental and optical cash back
• personal pension plan
• income protection and life assurance
• employee discounts via Perkbox

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a multi-disciplinary Design Engineering organization (mechanical design, electrical integration, structural analysis)
• Develop and execute the Design Engineering strategy aligned with Zephyr’s roadmap and certification objectives
• Own engineering performance metrics and drive continuous improvement across people, processes and tools
• Ensure timely design and development deliverables, controlling cost, schedule and quality
• Support design reviews, safety assessments, and regulatory audits
• Drive change management, obsolescence resolution and engineering modifications
• Develop team skills and foster technical excellence, collaboration and succession planning
• Oversee budgeting, spend approvals, and resource allocation across programs
• Ensure governance and compliance with airworthiness, certification and safety requirements
• Liaise with external authorities (e.g., CAA) as needed

Key requirements

• Bachelor in mechanical, aerospace, electrical, or related engineering
• Ten years’ experience in engineering design and analysis through product life-cycle in aerospace or regulated industry
• Experience leading technical leads and senior engineers
• UK CAA Part-21 Design Organisation experience (ideally)
• Strong resource planning and prioritisation across multiple programs
• Familiarity with lightweight aerospace composite structural design; CVE desirable
• Experience with process improvement and deployment of new engineering tools and systems
• Strong technical judgement and ability to drive decision-making in complex aerospace environments
• Excellent collaboration and stakeholder management; effective with executives, regulators, customers, and teams
• Familiarity with requirements management, CAD, PLM and analysis tools

• leadership and mentoring
• stakeholder management
• cross-functional collaboration
• requirements management tools
• CAD
• PLM

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