Job Description

Purpose of the Role

You build and run the propulsion organisation and deliver its work. The domain has to produce a powertrain that meets a demanding one-drive-inoperative case, prove it on rigs before it flies, and do it with suppliers who are more mature than your own team will be for the first year. Your job is to make that happen on the dates the programme has committed to.

Through Phase 1 this is also a hands-on engineering role: with a small team you will be the powertrain architect as well as the domain lead. A candidate looking to stop doing engineering is the wrong candidate for this seat.

You are paired with the Chief Engineer - Propulsion. The Chief Engineer decides what is technically acceptable; you decide how it is delivered. The pairing only works as a partnership, not a negotiation.

Role Boundaries

You hold delivery and line authority, not technical authority. You own the plan, the team, the cost, the facilities and supplier delivery performance. You do not approve the propulsion architecture and you do not sign gate artefacts. Where delivery pressure and technical acceptability collide, bring the conflict with options and their cost to the Chief Engineer - Platform and the Head of Engineering jointly rather than absorbing the risk quietly.

Key Responsibilities

• Build the domain: define the team shape with the Chief Engineer, recruit the Principals and Senior specialists, and develop them. Recruitment in electric drives and propulsor aeromechanics is a first-order responsibility, not an HR process you participate in.
• Own the domain delivery plan: scope, sequence, estimate and resource propulsion work from concept through rig test, and integrate it into the programme schedule.
• Stand up powertrain test capability: dynamometer and drive test, iron-bird contribution, propulsor test provision, instrumentation and the safety case for high-power rotating and high-voltage test.
• Act as powertrain architect through Phase 1: size drives, run and challenge design work, and stay close enough to the engineering to know when a plan is optimistic.
• Manage supplier delivery for motors, inverters and propulsors: technical requirements into procurement, supplier technical performance and recovery, and staged long-lead commitments.
• Own the domain cost: budget, estimates, capital for test facilities, and the recurring cost consequences of design choices.
• Deliver the domain commitments to other domains on time: the flight-control interface, power and thermal demands to Battery and Electrical, mount and pylon loads to Structures, and installation data to Industrialisation.
• Own safe execution in test and build areas: competence and training for high-voltage and high-energy rotating equipment work.
• Report delivery status honestly in programme reviews, including when it is bad, and escalate slippage while it can still be recovered.

Required Experience: Must Have

• 12+ years in propulsion, electric drives or powertrain engineering, of which at least five on airborne or equivalent safety-critical applications.
• Delivered a propulsion or powertrain development through to real hardware and a completed rig or ground test campaign, accountable for plan and schedule.
• Line management of a technical team including recruiting into it; you have hired engineers yourself.
• Stood up or materially expanded powertrain or drive test capability, including facilities, instrumentation and the safety case behind them.
• Hands-on powertrain architecture credibility: you can personally size a drive and challenge a Principal analysis on the merits, and have done so recently.
• Supplier delivery management for long-lead items, including recovery when a supplier fails to perform.
• Planning, estimating and cost ownership for a development programme with a physical test campaign.
• Comfort operating in a paired model where technical authority sits with someone else.

Required Experience: Preferred

• eVTOL, electric or hybrid-electric aircraft propulsion.
• Greenfield or early-stage programme experience where the organisation and facilities did not yet exist.
• Building engineering capability in a new country or region, including local hiring and supply chain.
• Interface with production ramp: prototype build, pilot line and the transition to rate.
• Hot-climate operation and its consequences for test conditions and facilities.