Operations Leader

Location: Barrow-in-Furness. This is an onsite role.

Salary: From £47,271 dependent on experience.

What You'll Be Doing

• Work with Discipline Manager to optimise resource use and drive trade excellence across all facilities.
• Lead by example, embedding trade standards and ensuring governance keeps pace with evolving legislation and best practice.
• Conduct regular Quality Control and Health & Safety reviews and audits to maintain a safe, high-performing workplace.
• Drive continuous improvement across people, processes, equipment, and training, collaborating with Manufacturing Engineering and CI teams to adopt new technologies and update trade procedures.
• Partner with Discipline Managers to create and maintain effective training plans and skills matrices, ensuring continual development and balanced expertise.
• Champion apprenticeships by coordinating meaningful work experiences, prioritising wellbeing and safety, and developing a world-class future workforce in collaboration with Early Careers and L&D.
• Build strong partnerships with Area Integration Managers, Trade Leads, and Team Leaders to foster an inclusive, high-performing team culture.
• Collaborate across BAE Systems to share lessons learned and integrate best practices that drive improvement across all areas.

Your Skills And Experiences

• Hands-on experience in lifting, slinging, rigging, fleeting, or moving loads of all sizes.
• Proven experience managing, executing, training, or overseeing LOLER related activities.
• Strong communicator able to engage confidently with everyone – from tradespeople to senior leaders and external customers.
• Skilled in process improvement, with the ability to interpret, develop, and clearly communicate procedures and documentation.
• Effective leader with experience driving meetings, initiatives, and improvement projects to successful outcomes.

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 LOLER Discipline Team

As the Operations Leader for LOLER, you'll play a key role within our Manufacturing function – leading the people, processes, and tools that keep all lifting operations on site running safely and efficiently. Reporting to the Discipline Manager for Services, you'll collaborate with peers across disciplines such as Working at Height and Confined Spaces to drive excellence and continuous improvement in all LOLER activities. We offer relocation support across all Submarine roles, subject to meeting eligibility criteria.

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: 19th November 2025. 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.