Lead Systems Engineer / Team Lead in Chatham

Location: Rochester

Salary: Up to £65,000 dependent on skills and experience.

We are recruiting for a range of technical and team leading positions.

What you’ll be doing:

• Providing guidance to less experienced engineers, supporting team members' wellbeing and career development.
• Collaborating to uncover technical solutions and sharing recommendations.
• Contributing to strategic project aspects and facilitating implementation of initiatives.
• Understanding scope, size and time phasing of packages of work, how these contribute to project success.
• Understanding the team size and skillset required, giving regular status and recommendations on resourcing requirements to the project and functional engineering manager.
• Understanding and enabling dependencies or facilities required across the team.
• Supporting the business by creating new estimates for bids and maintaining the schedule and budget for ongoing projects.

Your skills and experiences:

Essential:

• Experience in the systems engineering domain and product lifecycle.
• Familiarity with system engineering tools such as DOORS, Siemens Polarion, Enterprise Architect, CAMEO, MATLAB and/or Simulink.
• Experience leading a team and making decisions from either a technical or managerial aspect.
• A degree or equivalent qualification in a relevant Scientific/Engineering subject (e.g. Systems Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Aerospace, Physics or Mathematics).

Desirable:

• Experience leading and managing a system engineering team in relevant product markets.
• Experience in integration, test, and/or verification of real-time and/or safety-related systems.
• An understanding of information assurance, cyber security and environmental impact aspects relating to real-time embedded engineering products.

Benefits:

As well as a competitive pension scheme, BAE Systems also offers employee share plans, an extensive range of flexible discounted health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits, including a green car scheme, private health plans and shopping discounts – you may also be eligible for an annual incentive.

The Systems Engineering Team:

We are looking for experienced and dynamic individuals to step up and provide coordination and strategy for execution of the systems engineering on one or more projects. This role will provide support to the functional department and projects through work package scope, scheduling, resources and strategy for the project systems domain. Your role will include working with Engineering Project Managers to broadly understand the near-term work planned (3mth – 6mth) and longer term work planned (18mth – 24mth). You will be leading a team of highly capable engineers to deliver against your plans and estimates.

Why BAE Systems?

This is a place where you’ll be able to make a real difference. You’ll be part of an inclusive culture that values diversity of thought, rewards integrity, and merit, and where you’ll be empowered to fulfil your potential. We welcome people from all backgrounds and want to make sure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. If you have a disability or health condition (for example dyslexia, autism, an anxiety disorder etc.) that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Please be aware that many roles at BAE Systems are subject to both security and export control restrictions. These restrictions mean that factors such as your nationality, any nationalities you may have previously held, and your place of birth can restrict the roles you are eligible to perform within the organisation. All applicants must as a minimum achieve Baseline Personnel Security Standard. Many roles also require higher levels of National Security Vetting where applicants must typically have 5 to 10 years of continuous residency in the UK depending on the vetting level required for the role, to allow for meaningful security vetting checks.

Closing Date: 15th January 2026

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.