Senior Project Manager in Templecombe

Location: Templecombe, United Kingdom

Thales is a global technology leader with more than 83,000 employees on five continents. With over 7,500 people in the UK, operating across defence, space, aerospace, and digital security, Thales helps build a future we can all trust. This role is based in Templecombe with a hybrid working arrangement: 3 days per week on site (full-time hours). The role will involve customer interaction with international travel across customers, internal teams and suppliers.

Senior Project Manager to join our Under Water Systems (UWS) business to join the international Mine Warfare team. In this role you will take the lead on delivering products and projects across the full development project lifecycle and be part of the leadership team guiding project governance and implementation.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership and management – motivating and supporting the work-package team and individuals within the Project Team
• Role modelling the Thales Leadership Model behaviours, embedding delivery accountability and proactive risk and opportunity management culture
• Managing stakeholders – building trust and confidence through open dialogue and leveraging adjacent functions as appropriate (e.g., engineering, industry, procurement)
• Defining execution strategies and leading the creation of schedule baselines and structures for various work packages
• Ensuring each work-package maintains a robust baseline and accurate forecasts against the baseline
• Establishing and controlling KPIs for planned outcomes (e.g., On Time Delivery) to support confidence in forecasts
• Deploying robust project controls and representing the project at governance reviews
• Liaison with contributing functions to drive quality, cost and delivery performance
• Managing change to baselined scope, coordinating multi-disciplinary teams and supply chain to develop proposals while maintaining baseline integrity

Experience & Skills

This role requires a strong leader who will develop their skills within a high-profile, challenging project environment. You will have a proven track record of delivering challenging development projects in a context relevant to Thales within a complex, multi-site organisation, with the following:

• Leading the process of structuring and planning complex projects and deployment of best practice project controls
• Directing project activities with reference to the baseline and critical path, with proactive risk and opportunity management and controlling variance to time/cost/quality
• Project financial and contractual management
• Working across functional boundaries to achieve alignment and support for project objectives
• Demand/business planning principles in a project context with forecasting of resource requirements and scheduling with adjacent functions
• Representing projects through governance, providing evidence-based progress updates and highlighting risks/opportunities to Senior Management

Security Clearance

Due to the nature of the work, many roles are subject to security restrictions. This role requires Security Clearance (SC). It would be advantageous if currently held; if not, the successful applicant must obtain and maintain SC clearance prior to commencing employment. Eligibility typically requires residence in the UK for the last 5 years; in some cases a minimum of 3 years’ residence may be accepted with additional overseas checks.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits package, including: performance-related bonus, private healthcare (grade dependent), pension scheme, life cover, 24/7 Employee Assistance Program, and access to wellbeing resources
• 25–28 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) with possible buy-up of up to 40 hours/year (pro rata)
• Discounts on employee shopping schemes and fitness/gym memberships

We are committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels valued. If this role isn’t a perfect fit, you may consider joining our talent community for future opportunities.