Chief Engineer / Technical Lead

Overview

In this Chief Engineer role, you will be the technical authority responsible for delivering a flagship aerospace and defence programme from concept to deployment. You will shape the technical vision, lead a multidisciplinary team, and set the engineering culture, processes, and long-term strategy. You’ll balance performance, cost, and risk while aligning with founders, customers, and investors. This is a high-impact opportunity to influence product direction and contribute to a fast-growing, well-funded company with potential equity ownership.

Pay / Benefits

• equity opportunity for the right candidate
• competitive salary and benefits package
• well-funded defence technology start-up
• opportunity to influence product strategy and company growth
• access to founders, investors, and key decision-makers
• ambitious project with high impact

Responsibilities

• Act as the overall technical authority for the programme
• Define and own the technical strategy, roadmap, and system architecture
• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary engineering team across systems, software, electronics, mechanical design, integration, test, and platform engineering
• Establish engineering standards, processes, governance, and best practices
• Drive technical decision-making across performance, cost, risk, schedule, and manufacturability
• Chair design reviews and provide technical oversight throughout the product lifecycle
• Ensure successful delivery from concept development through design, integration, verification, validation, and testing
• Manage technical risk and implement mitigation strategies
• Act as the primary technical interface with customers, suppliers, partners, and key stakeholders
• Support future growth, business development activities, and strategic customer engagements
• Work with leadership to align technical delivery with business goals and milestones

Key requirements

• Degree qualified in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, or a related discipline
• Significant experience in complex aerospace, defence, autonomous systems, UAV, guided weapon, or safety-critical products
• Experience as a Chief Engineer, Head of Engineering, Technical Director, Programme Lead Engineer, or equivalent
• Proven track record leading multidisciplinary engineering teams and delivering complex programmes from concept to deployment
• Strong systems thinking with experience in requirements management, architecture development, integration, verification, and validation
• Ability to make programme-level technical decisions balancing performance, affordability, and delivery risk
• Experience engaging with senior stakeholders, customers, suppliers, and executive leadership teams
• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills

• leadership
• communication
• stakeholder management
• systems engineering
• architecture development
• requirements management

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