Head of Engineering
Location: Stevenage, UK
Type: Permanent, Full-time
Salary: £85,000–£95,000 + 12% bonus
We are looking for a commercially minded engineering leader who can operate at the critical interface between technical teams and the C-suite. The most important aspect of this role is the ability to translate complex engineering challenges, risks and opportunities into clear business decisions and strategic outcomes.
You may come from a mechanical, electronics, embedded/firmware or broader product engineering background, but you must have credibility across multidisciplinary engineering environments and be comfortable influencing at executive level.
The Role
As Head of Engineering, you will lead multidisciplinary engineering teams across electronics, mechanical, software and product development, ensuring delivery of new products, sustaining engineering activity and technical excellence across the organisation.
Reporting to the Technical Director, you will play a key leadership role in aligning engineering execution with business strategy, balancing technical quality, commercial priorities and operational delivery.
This role requires someone who can:
- Act as the bridge between engineering leadership and executive stakeholders
- Translate technical complexity into commercially meaningful insight
- Influence product strategy, investment decisions and organisational priorities
- Drive delivery across multiple engineering disciplines while maintaining strong communication with senior leadership
Key Responsibilities
Leadership & Business Alignment
- Serve as the primary interface between engineering teams and senior leadership
- Translate company strategy into engineering priorities and execution plans
- Communicate technical risks, trade-offs and opportunities clearly to non-technical stakeholders
- Drive accountability, delivery and continuous improvement across engineering functions
- Build strong cross-functional relationships across operations, manufacturing, quality and commercial teams
Engineering Leadership
- Lead multidisciplinary engineering teams across mechanical, electronics, embedded software/firmware and product development
- Oversee development activities from concept through industrialisation and production
- Ensure robust engineering governance, validation, testing and compliance processes
- Support both new product development and sustaining engineering activities
- Drive engineering best practice across DFM, DFT, DFA and lifecycle management
Team & Capability Development
- Lead, mentor and develop engineering managers and technical specialists
- Build a high-performance engineering culture focused on collaboration and execution
- Identify capability gaps, succession planning needs and recruitment priorities
- Support resource planning and engineering budget management
What We’re Looking For
Essential Experience
- Proven leadership of multidisciplinary engineering teams in a product development environment
- Strong ability to operate between technical teams and executive leadership
- Background in mechanical, electronics, embedded/firmware or related engineering disciplines
- Experience delivering products into medium or high-volume manufacture
- Strong commercial awareness and understanding of how engineering decisions affect cost, quality and business performance
- Experience communicating technical information to senior non-technical stakeholders
- Track record managing complex development programmes through production and ongoing support
- Experience within regulated or safety-critical industries such as medical, aerospace, industrial, medical or similar
Desirable
- Experience with long lifecycle products and configuration-controlled environments
- Exposure to international certification standards
- Experience across multi-site engineering organisations
- Background in value engineering or post-launch cost reduction
Benefits
- 25 days annual leave
- Company bonus scheme 12% (annual equivalent income well over 100k+)
- Pension plan 10%
- Private healthcare
- Health cash plan
- Employee assistance programme
If you are an engineering leader who combines technical credibility with strong executive communication and commercial judgement, we would welcome your application.