Location: Templecombe, United KingdomThales 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.UWS Services Head of FunctionTemplecombe or CheadleUWS is growing at a rapid pace. Due to the success of programmes within UWS, and specifically SSOP & MSET, and with a portfolio of world leading products both in conventional systems and in new technologies (maritime autonomy), this has led to extensive growth, including in the Services team supporting our projects.This role is an opportunity to shape the Services (JF07) organisation, develop the skillset within the job family, and therefore contribute to the long term strategy of UWS and Thales. You will be working as part of a team that is being relaunched in one of the most exciting areas of the business.The UWS Head of services function is a key senior leadership role and a central member of the UWS Services leadership team. This essential, strategic level role has a broad remit, from supporting delivery strategy and direction to development of key capabilities and hands on support and coaching of service delivery teams.Key Responsibilities and Tasks:

• Leadership and management - Leading the Services (JF07) function for UWS UK including people plans covering individual and collective career and succession planning
• Role modelling the Thales Leadership Model behaviours and embedding a strong sense of delivery accountability and a proactive risk management culture at all levels of the team
• Being the UWS process owner for the Services processes and being able to understand and interact with the associated parallel process owners to ensure that Services are delivered effectively. As part of this work co-ordinating with the UWS Services transformation director to identify sub-optimal processes to be improved and then assisting in improving these processes.
• Owning the Services cost centre and managing this day-to-day and providing accurate management reporting/forecasting in line with the agreed multi-year budget (MYB).
• Defining the future MYB requirements for the cost centre including training continuous improvement activities both individual and collective.
• Ensuring the Services function are implementing the Project Management Function skills, such as, leading the creation of Project Baselines and structures through the bid phase of the lifecycle - PBS/WBS/OBS, work package definition, estimating, risk and opportunity analysis and creation of the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) and utilising best practice working with the UK central services functions and the UWS Bid and project functions
• Ensuring that appropriate KPIs are established and controlled for Project outcomes E.g. On Time Delivery and to support confidence in forecasts
• Liaison with contributing functions to drive quality, cost & delivery performance
• Providing coaching and guidance to the Services team as required and putting a development structure in place to ensure the continuous skills improvement
• Ensuring lessons from previous projects are learned and incorporated; contributing lessons for the wider benefit of the business
• Ensuring that all Service Project activities comply with the relevant Thales Chorus 2 processes 8.1, 5.1 & 5.2 , ensuring that the overall programmes operates as 'one team' and has a consistency of approach across the various programme management activities, including schedule , cost and risk /opportunity management
• Ability to regularly attend Templecombe, Crawley and Cheadle sites as required

Skills & Experience

• Have a track record of Service Delivery Management and/or PM leadership in delivery of programmes with multiple internal and external interfaces ideally from a services perspective
• Experience of Leading a Function within Thales
• Established team manager with evidence of excellent communication and influencing skills at all levels of an organisation
• Experience and ability to interpret and implement best practice who has led a transformational process
• Proven People Management skills & demonstrable leadership within a Programme Management environment
• Extensive experience in the use of Service, Deliver and Project Management toolsets
• Have significant knowledge of the full business lifecycle management, including capture, qualification and developing capture plans and winning strategies
• Be a proven Leader and people manager within a matrix style organisation
• Stakeholder management and negotiation - dealing with customers, partners, suppliers and other parts of the Thales business
• Be customer-focused, balanced with recognising the need for governance and have the ability to establish and meet deadlines, multi-task and prioritise
• Possess strong planning and delivery orientation skills and have excellent commercial / financial / business acumen. The ability to look ahead, identify risks and proactively engage with them
• Resilience and the ability to successfully manage change
• Be collaborative and an excellent communicator, with extensive client and stakeholder management experience/skills
• Communication - interpersonal, verbal and presentation/report writing
• Organisation and analytical skills in complex environments
• A positive attitude combined with excellent interpersonal and motivational skills.

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.If you are interested in this role, we would encourage you to have informal chat with the Talent Acquisition Partner.Thales is an equal opportunities employer and diversity and inclusion are integral to the success of Thales. The successful candidate will need full Security Clearance (SC) -For more information and guidance please visit the UKSV website 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!