Group Director Safety & Quality in London

The Group Director Safety and Quality is responsible for setting and delivering the strategy for Safety and Quality that ultimately ensures QinetiQ operates a safe, efficient and effective business. The role is responsible for setting the safety and quality culture standards for the Group and delivering the strategic improvement plan to meet this strategy. The role leads the definition and deployment of a Health, Safety and Environment and Quality capability, which provides advice, support and input to businesses and functions, acting as the conduits for understanding and improvement. The role drives the highest standards of process and behaviour, to enable the business to operate a safe, right first-time approach.

Key Accountabilities

• Lead, develop and monitor the organization's safety and quality strategy, policies, and frameworks.
• Ensure the provision of safety and quality competence and capacity to the business, developing skills to align to goals of the QinetiQ strategy.
• Ensure efficient compliance with statutory obligations, health and safety legislation, and external standards.
• Lead the development and maintenance of an integrated Safety Management System and Quality Management System.
• Define, develop and embed frameworks to meet national/international standards (e.g., ISO) and regulatory requirements, while identifying risks and implementing mitigation actions.
• Working with the People function, promote and improve the safety and quality culture, driving for excellent levels of ownership, understanding and performance.
• Embed safety and quality processes and practices, driving an improvement focus at all levels and across all sites.
• Ensure a suitable structure is in place to enable incident reporting, conduct investigations, and ensure learning is shared to prevent recurrence.
• Operate a suite of Quality Performance Indicators to appropriately inform and steer the business to higher levels of performance.

Key Capabilities/Knowledge

• Strong leadership skills, with a proven track record of driving positive change across multiple countries, sites with a mix of services and products.
• Proven track record of delivering a culture of safety and continuous improvement across a range of environments (offices, workshops, labs, etc.).
• A positive and encouraging attitude to challenges, enabling the motivation of direct and indirect teams to achieve goals.
• Excellent interpersonal communication in both verbal and written forms, at all levels from operational staff up to and including board level.
• A good working knowledge of applicable regulation and associated legislation.
• A pragmatic thinker, able to identify both process improvement opportunities and where to apply flexibility/robustness to deliver outcomes.
• A strong ‘people person’, with the ability to work with and influence many different people.
• Ability to challenge and question people, process and systems in a direct but non-offensive and tactful manner.

Experience & Qualifications

• At least 10 years’ experience at a senior leadership level, leading safety and/or quality in a technical environment.
• Experience of multi domain safety and quality, including but not limited to aviation, ordnance, munitions and explosives, high energy systems.
• Appropriately aligned technical qualifications (MCQI, Nebosh) desirable.

Why Join QinetiQ?

As we continue to grow into new markets around the world, there’s never been a more exciting time to join QinetiQ. The formula for success is our appetite for innovation and having the courage to take on a wide variety of complex challenges.

As a QinetiQ employee, you’ll experience a unique working environment where teams from different backgrounds, disciplines and experience enjoy collaborating widely and openly as we undertake this exciting and rewarding journey. Through effective teamwork, and pulling together, you’ll get to experience what happens when we all share different perspectives, blend disciplines, and link technologies; constantly discovering new ways of solving complex problems in a diverse and inclusive environment where you can be authentic, feel valued and realise your full potential.

Our Benefits

• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance.
• Competitive holiday allowance, with the option to purchase additional days.
• Options to join Health Cash Plan, Private Medical Insurance and Dental Insurance.
• Employee discount portal: Personal Accident Insurance, Travel Insurance, Restaurants, Cinema Tickets and much more.
• We are proud to support the Armed Forces community by honouring the Armed Forces Covenant and maintaining our Gold Award standard in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.
• Volunteering Opportunities - helping charities and local community.

Our Recruitment Process:

We want to make sure that our recruitment process is as inclusive as possible and we aspire to bring out the best in our candidates by creating an environment where everyone feels valued, heard and supported. If you have a disability or health condition that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your Recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Many roles in QinetiQ are subject to national security vetting being completed, applicants who already hold the appropriate level of vetting may be able to transfer it upon appointment. A number of roles are also subject to additional restrictions, which mean factors such as nationality or previous nationalities may affect the roles that you can be employed in.

Please note that all applicants for this role must be eligible for SC clearance, as a minimum.