Commercial Manager in Plymouth

Location: Flexible, UK + Hybrid Working

Compensation: £50,000 - £65,000

Role Type: Full time / Permanent

Lead the Commercial Strategy Shaping the Future of Naval Autonomy

At Babcock, we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together. If you join us, you can play your part as a Commercial Manager at any of our main UK locations, near your nearest commutable town or city.

The role

As a Commercial Manager, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the commercial strategy that underpins Babcock’s ambitious growth across UK and international naval autonomy programmes. This is a high‑profile opportunity to influence some of the most advanced developments in defence and maritime technology—contributing to national security while growing your career in a fast‑moving, future‑focused environment. You’ll be a key part of our Business Growth Team, helping to ensure our commercial solutions are robust, competitive, innovative, and aligned to our strategic ambitions. This is an exciting opportunity for someone who thrives in dynamic, growth‑led environments, enjoys solving complex commercial challenges, and wants to work at the forefront of next‑generation naval capabilities.

Day to day you’ll have the following responsibilities:

• Lead commercial direction for UK and overseas naval autonomy programmes, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives.
• Drive high‑quality bid and pre‑contract activities from Gate 0–5, developing commercially sound solutions that support business growth.
• Influence and collaborate with Business Development, Engineering, Technical and senior stakeholders to ensure commercial excellence, and to develop commercial propositions to match our expanding product and solution offerings.
• Draft assumptions, dependencies, exclusions and commercial positioning papers to inform bid responses.
• Develop strategic recommendations that enhance collaboration, streamline approach, and drive optimal commercial outcomes.

This role is full time, 37 hours per week. You’ll be based remotely with travel to Rosyth, Plymouth or Bristol 2-3 times a month.

Essential experience of the Commercial Manager

• Strong experience in commercial bid management, ideally within the UK defence market.
• Extensive knowledge of commercial terms, agreement structures and commercial strategy.
• Experience in UK Ministry of Defence and Government contracting methods and frameworks (e.g., DEFCONs, SC2, DEFFORMs, CCS frameworks).
• Ability to meet critical internal and external deadlines with accuracy and attention to detail.
• Confident working in fast‑paced, multi‑stakeholder environments and complex procurement cycles.

Qualifications for the Commercial Manager

• Professional membership or working towards CIPS/ World Commerce and Contracting.
• Degree qualified (or equivalent) in Engineering, Business, Law or Accountancy is desirable but not essential.

Security Clearance

The successful candidate must be a sole UK National who is 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.

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 share scheme
• 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.
• ‘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
• Excellent development opportunities and benefits package including an employee assistance programme supporting physical, mental and financial wellbeing.

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: 10/04/2026