Naval Overseers – Acceptance Team Leader in Glasgow

At Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), we supply and maintain vital equipment and services for the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force. Together, we deliver a vast range of essential defence programmes, and strive for what's next. DE&S has recently been integrated into the National Armaments Director (NAD) Group, which brings together key Ministry of Defence (MOD) organisations to provide integrated capabilities faster and more efficiently for our armed forces and allies.

This is your opportunity to join a flagship defence programme and be at the forefront of delivering the backbone of the Royal Navy’s future frontline surface fleet. As a Naval Overseer, working in a dynamic shipyard environment, you will play a pivotal role in developing and sustaining strong, effective relationships with our industry partners. You will support the delivery of shared strategic objectives while cultivating productive stakeholder engagement with Navy Command and our export partners.

You will provide on-site technical oversight and assurance throughout naval vessel construction and trials, proactively identifying and addressing risks, applying constructive challenge to resolve shipyard quality and performance issues, and supporting the successful delivery of critical maritime capability. The role offers the opportunity to participate in sea trials, spending time at sea and seeing first-hand how your work contributes to operational capability.

The Type 26 frigate is a strategically important acquisition programme, contributing to the UK's defence prosperity agenda and strengthening international collaboration. This role offers excellent development opportunities for professional growth and to build experience supporting long-term career progression.

The role will provide valuable experience in establishing productive stakeholder relationships, fostering communication, and influencing skills required to operate effectively across Government and industry, and enhance your leadership capability. If you’re effective at developing trusted partnerships, promoting collaboration, and finding practical solutions, this is an exceptional opportunity to make a tangible contribution to the future capability of the Royal Navy.

This role is based within operational shipbuilding facilities and requires regular attendance aboard vessels under construction and trials. Successful candidates must be able to safely access all areas of a ship, including climbing ladders, negotiating narrow access routes, entering confined spaces, and working around scaffolding and temporary structures. While the role is not primarily physically demanding, it requires a suitable level of mobility, agility, and resilience to safely undertake inspection, assurance, and oversight activities within an industrial maritime environment.

The role offers a compressed working pattern of 8-hour days Monday to Thursday and a shortened day on Friday (37 hours/week), with opportunities to support occasional night and weekend working.

What you'll be doing:

• Lead the Type 26 Joint Assurance and Acceptance Team, setting clear direction, priorities, and expectations to ensure acceptance activity is planned, coordinated, and delivered effectively across the programme.
• Own and drive Type 26 ship acceptance, ensuring the project has coherent plans, appropriate evidence, and timely decisions to demonstrate that ships meet contractual, technical, and operational requirements.
• Provide senior leadership and professional judgement on acceptance risk, concessions, readiness, and compliance, ensuring issues are understood, prioritised, and escalated with clear recommendations where required.
• Work closely with naval overseers, project engineering teams, industry partners, ship’s staff and other MOD stakeholders to align acceptance priorities, resolve blockers, and maintain delivery momentum through build, test, commissioning, and trials.
• Assure the quality, completeness, and traceability of acceptance evidence, helping the programme make confident, auditable decisions on readiness, compliance, and handover.
• Develop a positive, inclusive, and high-performing assurance and acceptance culture, supporting team members to apply sound engineering judgement, learn from experience and contribute to continuous improvement.

Person specification:

To be successful with your application, you'll need to show that you meet the following essential criteria:

• Can demonstrate previous experience in delivery of maritime projects; or ship or offshore oil/gas structures construction; or ship or offshore oil/gas structures maintenance/refit/upgrade; or ship or offshore oil/gas structures operation.
• Demonstrable experience of providing technical advice at a senior level and leading the delivery of successful engineering outcomes in multidisciplinary projects.
• Wide-ranging depth and breadth of technical experience in own specialism with knowledge and application of Systems Engineering approaches.
• As a minimum hold Chartered Engineer (CEng) registration, or an equivalent professional registration recognised by a licensed Professional Engineering Institution.

Please note applicants who hold only Chartered Quality Practitioner (CQP) must also hold, as minimum, RQF Level 6 Engineering qualification or Engineering Technician (EngTech).

In addition to the responsibilities above, the following technical competences and behaviours will be assessed at interview:

• Core Behaviour 1: Making Effective Decisions
• Core Behaviour 2: Leadership
• Technical Competence 1: Setting Technical Requirements, Evaluation and Acceptance (Expert)
• Technical Competence 2: Technical Decision Making (Expert)

Offered benefits:

• 25 days’ annual leave +1 day a year up to 30 days, 8 bank holidays and a day off for the King’s birthday.
• Market-leading average employer pension contribution of 28.97%.
• Annual performance-based bonus and recognition awards.
• Access to specialist training and funded qualifications.
• Support for progression.
• Huge range of discounts.
• Volunteering days.
• Enhanced parental leave schemes.

Improving innovation and enriching our culture, diversity of thought is vital to our success. Here you’ll find a supportive, family-friendly organisation to be a part of - and if you need any assistance with your application, just let us know.