Strategic Delivery Network Project Manager

Location: Templecombe, United Kingdom

Thales people provide armed forces customers with operational advantage at every decisive moment throughout the mission. Defence and armed forces customers rely on us to deliver the full range of defence mission systems solutions at land, sea, and air. Our platforms extend across the battlespace including Above and Sonar, Electronic Combat, and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

Job Title: Strategic Delivery Network Project Manager

Location : Templecombe (flexible on Cheadle/Crawley)

What the role has to offer

• An opportunity to shape our business and culture through transformation project work

• Career development and growth, a real chance to upskill yourself

• Interesting project work with cross functional business alignment, resulting in maximum exposure across Thales

Our Opportunity

The role requires strong leadership, project management expertise, procurement and engineering knowledge, excellent stakeholder management, team-building skills, resilience, the ability to manage ambiguity and have a proactive approach to identifying and managing risks and opportunities. Previous experience of working within a supply chain environment is preferred and engineering experience is desirable. You will interface with most TUK UWS business functions; you must be comfortable operating in unfamiliar and unchartered environments.

Day to day you will:
The purpose of this role is to ensure the successful delivery of outsourcing requirements, from enquiry to setup, to handover and task completion. You’ll be the overall person in charge of understanding and documenting the requirement, co-ordinating the business functions in the setup the outsource requirement. Additionally the handover of the outsource solution to the business function and the monitoring of the ongoing success of the outsource in line with business objectives and targets. Key activities include, but will not be limited to:

• Manage stakeholders, building trust and confidence through open dialogue and leveraging

• Identify, discover or establish outsource requirements from the stakeholder(s), documenting and agreeing the requirement

• Deploy and promote the MTB core & non-core framework, challenge stakeholder assumptions, challenging the norm, fact & fiction, as well as mind-sets to establish activities ripe for outsource

• Produce tasks forms, Statements of Work (SORs), Statement of Requirements (SOWs) (technical and non-technical) for stakeholders. Receiving buy off before issue

• Bring parties together to resolve problems, issues and misalignments as they arise. Act as the unblocker and neutral party to keep projects moving forward

• Be the point of contact for the business & suppliers for escalations and enquiries, owning both in until closure

• Work with the procurement function to identify outsource suppliers, support the procurement function in fast and effective PVET decisions. Whilst validating the solution, ensuring it is competitive and meets the business needs

• Work with category management to tailor PVET execution methods as required, deploying agile techniques to meet project requirements

• Define the contractual requirements for each project and communicate requirements

• Conduct value for money (VFM) assessments and or business case assessments, ensuring the outsource solution meets the business needs

• Create milestone project plans through working with stakeholders for each outsource requirement, own the plan, manage the schedule and drive the team in achieving plan success

• Document outsource projects utilising OneNote, create and present project status to the leadership team

• Define KPI’s and measure project success, take ownership of underperforming engagements bringing parties together to agree recovery actions

• Implement robust project controls; liaise with contributing functions to drive quality, cost & delivery performance

About You

• Ability to cut through ambiguity to achieve alignment and support for project objectives

• Able to lead, manage and influence multi-disciplinary teams to achieve the best outcome for Thales

• A positive attitude combined with excellent interpersonal and motivational skills

• A pedigree of managing stakeholders and supplier relationships

• The ability to manage multiply mini projects, ensuring that all remain on plan to commitment

• Strong planning principles with the ability to identify resources required, as well as identifying and mitigating critical paths

• A proven track record in the delivery of procurement projects for or on behalf of projects in a context relevant to Thales

• Lead an acquisition process from start to finish, structuring and planning complex requirements with tailored deployment of best practice project and acquisition controls, working with the correct teams to ensure delivery

• Directing project procurement activities with reference to the baseline and critical path, with a focus on proactive risk and opportunity management and controlling variance to time/cost/quality

• Experience of working with quality, financial and commercial persons/teams

Additional Security Information

Due to the sensitive nature of much of the work, all applicants must be eligible for UK MoD Security Clearance (SC level minimum).

What We Can Offer

We’re committed to giving you opportunities to be your best. We believe in embracing the passion and potential of our people, and to achieve this we offer market leading training, development and experiences, along with the opportunity to be mentored and coached by some of the smartest minds in the industry. We hire from within as our first priority, so you’ll have a myriad of opportunities within our diverse, global organisation.

Flexibility

Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

Thales is an equal opportunities employer and diversity and inclusion are integral to the success of Thales.

In line with Thales' Baseline Security requirements, candidates will be asked to provide evidence of identity, eligibility to work in the UK and employment and/or education history for up to three years. Some vacancies may require full Security Clearance which can require further evidence to be provided. For further details of the evidence required to apply for Baseline and Security Clearance please refer to the Defence Business Services National Security Vetting (DBS NSV) Agency.

At Thales we provide CAREERS and not only jobs. With Thales employing 80,000 employees in 68 countries our mobility policy enables thousands of employees each year to develop their careers at home and abroad, in their existing areas of expertise or by branching out into new fields. Together we believe that embracing flexibility is a smarter way of working.

Thales UK is committed to providing an inclusive and barrier-free recruitment process. We will provide reasonable adjustments and support to ensure neuro-diverse applicants or those with a disability or long-term condition can be their best during the recruitment process. To request an adjustment, if you need this job advert in an alternative format or if you have any questions about the recruitment process, please contact Resourcing Ops for mid to senior roles, or the Early Careers Team for graduate and apprentice roles.

Great journeys start here, apply now!