Design Engineering Senior Manager

Location: Farnborough

Contract Type: Full Time, Permanent

Hours: 37 – some flexibility with WFH

Travel: Occasional, Less than 10%

AALTO, a global leader in Stratospace. Based in Farnborough, AALTO is an Airbus subsidiary that manufactures, operates, and delivers services with its solar-powered, stratospheric platform: Zephyr.

Zephyr’s persistence enables continuous flight for months at a time. Its current flight-time record of over 67 days in the stratosphere. From above 60,000+ft, or 20KM above ground, AALTO can deliver several applications including direct-to-device connectivity and high-resolution Earth observation.

AALTO operates in a new operational layer between most of air traffic and low-Earth orbit, Stratospace. This is where high-altitude platforms led by Zephyr deliver services to commercial and government partners. We can help monitor environments, observe borders, track natural disasters and connect unconnected communities.

Join us as we create a new domain of aerospace: Stratospace. You’ll be part of a highly-skilled, innovative and passionate group of people – Team AALTO. Together, we can Unlock Stratospace.

About The Role

We are seeking a Design Engineering Senior Manager, to lead our expanding multi-discipline design team at our Farnborough site. You will provide technical leadership and people management across mechanical and electrical design and analysis activities, supporting new platform design and certification activities, along with sustainment and improvement of our legacy systems.

Responsibilities to include:

• Functional Leadership and Strategy: Build, lead and develop a multi-disciplinary Design Engineering organisation comprising mechanical design, electrical integration and structural analysis disciplines. Develop and execute the Design Engineering strategy supporting Zephyr's long-term product road-map, certification objectives, technology maturation plans and organisational growth. Own engineering performance metrics and drive continuous improvement across people, processes and tools.

• Product Development: Accountable for timely design and development deliverables. Maintain cost, schedule, and quality of technical baselines throughout the program life-cycle. Act as the internal champion for design best practice and influence strategic direction on material and supplier selection. Support design reviews, safety assessments, and regulatory audits.

• Product Sustainment: Collaboratively drive the change management process, managing resolution of obsolescence, manufacturing easement and improvement activities, aligning engineering priorities with company objectives. Review and approve where appropriate, engineering solutions for structural, mechanical, and electrical system modifications.

• Skills Development and Growth: Develop the team's personal and professional skills, coaching technical leaders and senior engineers while fostering a strong culture of technical excellence, collaboration, accountability and succession planning.

• Financial and Schedule Oversight: Estimating, budgeting and tracking of spend, approval of expenses, project spend and other business processes. Workforce planning, capital investment prioritisation, and resource allocation across multiple programmes.

• Regulatory and Process Compliance: Ensure engineering governance and processes are followed consistently. Maintain compliance with applicable airworthiness, certification, and safety requirements, liaising with external authorities such as the CAA if required.

Skills and Knowledge Required

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, aerospace, electrical, or related engineering discipline.

• Proven experience leading, developing and mentoring technical leads and senior engineers.

• Ten years’ experience in engineering design and analysis through all product life-cycle stages in aerospace or a similarly regulated industry, ideally in a UK CAA Part-21 Design Organisation.

• Strong resource planning and prioritisation skills across multiple concurrent programs.

• Familiarity with lightweight aerospace composite structural design. Competent approval signatory for structures, ideally as a CVE is desirable.

• Experience in process improvement and deployment of new engineering tools and systems.

• Technical credibility and sound engineering judgement. Able to drive technical decision-making and root-cause corrective action, in complex aerospace environments.

• Excellent collaboration and stakeholder management skills. Able to communicate effectively with executive leadership, regulators, customers, and technical teams.

• Familiarity with aerospace engineering tools for requirements management, CAD, PLM and analysis and the ability to drive advanced adoption within the team.

In addition to an attractive market-aligned salary, we offer:

Rewarding Excellence: Benefit from our short-term incentive plan that rewards your hard work and dedication.

Enjoy Your Time Off: Benefit from 25 days of holiday to relax and recharge.

Stay Healthy: We’ve got your health covered with private medical insurance, along with dental and optical cash back.

Secure Your Future: Take advantage of our personal pension plan to ensure a comfortable retirement.

Peace of Mind: Our income protection and life assurance schemes are there to support you when you need it most.

Getting around: Drive the latest vehicles with our discounted salary sacrifice scheme.

We Care About You: Our employee assistance programme is always available to provide the support you need.

Perks Galore: Enjoy a range of employee discounts via Perkbox, from household goods to travel!

Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?

If this role isn’t quite what you’re looking for but are keen to be contacted about opportunities at AALTO, you can register your details here: https://careers.aaltohaps.com/connect