RTRS are supporting Thales on an exclusive basis to recruit this role for their Ground Transportation Systems (GTS) rail division in Cheadle.

Project Design Authority

Location: Cheadle, United Kingdom

Thales people architect solutions that support 85 million mainline and suburban passenger journeys, worldwide, every day. Our Rail Signalling and Communication systems are used on metro lines across major cities, and 72,000 kms of route, 52,000 trains per day in 16 countries are controlled by our Traffic Management Systems. Together We deployed the first-ever nationwide ticketing system which processes over 50 million ticketing transactions in 100 cities daily.

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.

As a Project Design Authority with Thales you will be responsible for solution compliance for a bid or project. You will act as the primary technical leader of the bid or project team and support technical interfaces with the Customer.

This role will give you the opportunity to work in the transport sector on cutting edge projects within integrated communication systems. The most successful PDAs at Thales are people who are comfortable really getting embedded in to a solution and are very hands on.

Key Responsibilities and Tasks:

• Supports Customer needs/requirements and assesses Solution architecture and technical choices.
• Ensures Solution compliance with Customer needs, Product Policy, Make-Team-Buy (MTB) Strategy & applicable legislation, rules & regulations.
• Reviews the technical risks and opportunities and the related mitigation plans throughout the bid or project.
• Ensures best trade-off between Customer requirements & Product Policy consistent with schedule, costs, MTB strategy & risks/ opportunities.
• Checks the production and the maintenance/service aspects of the Solution with the Production Process/Technology Manager (PPTM) and the Service Engineering Manager.
• Approves the technical specification and source selection of subsystems/products to be outsourced, by taking into account Make-Team-Buy policy, export restrictions and offset requirements.
• Checks that the Engineering Environment (E2) for the Solution is consistent with Country/Company E2 Instruction, and overall Solution cost, technical risks & schedule.
• Approves the Design & Justification File (D&JF) prepared by the Solution Architect (ARC).
• Approves the completion of integration, verification, validation and qualification results.
• Leads the main bid/project Engineering Reviews and approves the main Engineering deliverables at each project decision milestone.
• Contribute to business strategy and product development as required. Including

Skills and Experience

• Strong software technical background
• Good software design or architecture background
• Capable of providing governance to software projects
• 10 years within a senior Software design / Architecture role
• Good experience working with Agile software development processes
• Knowledge of any of the following technologies – C#/.NET, Java, Virtualisation, Cloud, Automation Testing /Selenium
• A well-proven capability – with natural ability to build and sustain strong working relationships at all levels.
• Ability to effectively manage relationships across the business and achieve outcomes beneficial to both own team and the broader business.
• A strong record of on-budget, on-time delivery, whilst maximising margin and delighting the customer.
• Experienced and knowledgeable of whole systems engineering lifecycles for large complex systems.
• Proven technical/project experience in critical control systems engineering