Chief engineer

Job Details

• Job Title: Chief Engineer
• Location: Flexible UK + Hybrid Working Arrangements
• Compensation: From £75,100 Dependant on Experience + Benefits
• Role Type: Full time / Permanent
• Role ID: SF72524

Overview

Bring Your Commercial Skills to Projects That Help Create a Safer World.

At Babcock we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together, and if you join us, you can play your part as a Chief Engineer based at our Plymouth, Devon or Bristol sites.

The role

As a Chief Engineer you’ll have a role that’s out of the ordinary. You’ll provide strategic and technical leadership across multidisciplinary engineering teams working at the forefront of defence, aerospace, and engineering innovation. This is your opportunity to influence some of the UK’s most critical vehicle capability programmes — ensuring they are safe, reliable, resilient, and built to the highest technical standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead and coordinate multidisciplinary engineering teams delivering complex vehicle programmes. Oversee system architecture development, design solutions, integration strategies, and verification and validation activities.
• Act as the primary technical interface with customers, suppliers, and internal stakeholders.
• Represent engineering at technical reviews, governance boards, and programme milestones.
• Ensure technical integrity, safety, and performance across all protected mobility vehicle systems.

This is a full time role, working 37 hours per week. Hybrid working patterns are available with 2 days onsite per week based in Plymouth, Devon or Bristol.

Essential experience

• Proven experience leading complex, multidisciplinary engineering programmes at a senior level.
• Strong understanding of vehicle systems engineering, integration, and lifecycle management.
• Deep knowledge of defence standards, safety assurance, and regulatory compliance.
• Demonstrable leadership and stakeholder management capability.
• Ability to influence technical strategy in a high‑integrity engineering environment.

Qualifications

• HNC/HND or Degree in an Engineering discipline.
• Chartered Engineer status or working towards it (Desirable).
• Additional systems engineering, safety engineering or defence-accredited qualifications (Desirable).

Security clearance

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Security Check (SC) security clearance for this role.

Many of the positions within our company are subject to national security clearance and Trade Control restrictions. This means that your eligibility for certain roles may be affected by your place of birth, nationality, current or former citizenship, and any residency you hold or have held. Further details are available at United Kingdom Security Vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

What we offer

• Generous holiday allowance
• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance
• Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+
• Employee shopping savings portal
• Payment of Professional Fees
• Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave
• Holiday Trading is a benefit that allows UK Babcock employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement. This Window opens February through to March annually.
• ‘Be Kind Day’ enables employees to take one working day's paid leave a year (or equivalent hours) to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity

Babcock

We’re Babcock — a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 26,000 people working together to make a difference.

Here, you’ll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we’re building a future that lasts — not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance.

We call that lifetime engineering.

Join us and see how far we can go, together.

We are a disability confident committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email careers@babcockinternational.com with the subject header ‘Reasonable adjustments requirement’. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone’s free to thrive. We are happy to talk about flexible working – please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.

Closing date: 08/04/2026

We are no longer accepting applications for this role.