Role summary
We hire for talent, not rigid boxes. This role represents a business need, but the way it evolves will be shaped by the individual. The work you do here directly contributes to Europe’s technological independence.
Responsibilities
- Own the system safety of the organization's products across their lifecycle, from concept and development through test and operation.
- Build the organization's Safety function and team (incl. external partners and service providers), establishing a capable, lean organisation with clear technical authority.
- Set the safety framework for complex defence systems and work with engineering to turn early hazard analysis into practical requirements, design choices, and resolved actions.
- Own safety cases and assurance evidence, keeping safety arguments, hazard logs, verification, assumptions, and change impacts traceable and proportionate to risk.
- Lead the safety approach for flight-test operations, including readiness criteria, safety reviews, test-specific risk assessment, operational controls, and test release.
- Represent the organization's safety position with test ranges, regulators, and qualification authorities, and define the practical application of relevant military airworthiness, range, product, explosives or ordnance, and NATO standards.
- Provide independent technical challenge, make high-consequence judgements under ambiguity, and escalate concerns where the evidence does not support a safe decision.
- Build safety capability across engineering and test teams, using anomalies, near misses, and design changes to drive lasting improvement.
Requirements
- An established safety leader with significant experience in aerospace, defence, guided weapons, propulsion, autonomy, or another high-consequence engineering environment.
- Experience in building, scaling, or materially shaping a safety function and leading safety specialists.
- Strong hands-on system-safety expertise, including hazard analysis, safety requirements, safety cases and assurance arguments, risk management, verification, and safety governance.
- Meaningful experience of flight-test safety and operations, including test planning, readiness reviews, test-site interfaces, and operational risk assessment.
- Able to engage directly with complex safety-critical products, including hardware, software, autonomy, propulsion, avionics, and system integration, and apply relevant military airworthiness, range, product, explosives or ordnance, and NATO standards.
- Sound judgement under uncertainty and high consequence: able to balance mission, technical, schedule, and safety considerations, and know when to seek additional expertise.
- Clear, authoritative communication with engineering teams, senior leadership, test organisations, regulators, and qualification authorities.
- Fluent in English; German fluency desirable given our bilingual working environment, though not required for this specialist discipline.