People Programme and Strategic Workforce Planning Lead

Location: Various Sites

Compensation: Competitive + Benefits

Role Type: Full time / Permanent

Lead the Future of Workforce Strategy in Defence, Aerospace and Engineering

At Babcock, we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together. If you join us, you can play your part as a People Programme and Strategic Workforce Planning Lead at either Devonport, Bristol or Rosyth sites.

The role

As a People Programme and Strategic Workforce Planning Lead, you’ll sit at the heart of our mission to shape the long‑term capability and success of our Marine Sector. This is an exciting opportunity to influence strategic decision‑making, design future workforce models, and ensure we have the right people, with the right skills, in the right place at the right time. Your work will make a tangible difference — strengthening our organisation, informing our people strategy, and supporting the delivery of nationally significant defence and engineering programmes. It’s a role that provides outstanding scope for professional growth, enabling you to deepen your expertise across workforce strategy, analytics, programme delivery, and senior stakeholder engagement.

Day‑to‑day, you’ll have the following responsibilities:

• Partnering with senior leaders to translate organisational objectives into actionable people plans.
• Leading the programme management of our Marine Sector people strategy, ensuring timely delivery of critical initiatives.
• Developing and maturing our Strategic Workforce Planning approach — forecasting future capability needs, modelling scenarios and designing supply plans.
• Using data, analytics and evidence‑based insights to support performance, talent, organisational design and workforce optimisation decisions.
• Creating dashboards, reports and workforce metrics that highlight trends, risks and opportunities.

This is a full‑time role, working 37 hours per week, Monday to Friday. Travel to other Babcock and customer sites may be expected.

Essential experience

• Experience as an HR Business Partner, HR subject matter expert, or similar strategic HR role.
• Strong background in Strategic Workforce Planning, including forecasting, scenario modelling and capability planning.
• High level of analytical capability with the ability to interpret complex data and convert insights into clear actions.
• Strong programme management experience.
• Proficiency with HR analytics tools, dashboards and workforce data platforms.

Qualifications

• Relevant professional experience within HR, workforce planning, people analytics or organisational development.
• CIPD qualification or equivalent.
• Project or programme management certification is desirable.

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: 09/04/2026