Role

You will own the planning and delivery of our programmes, from development projects with cell manufacturers and vehicle OEMs, through grant-funded collaborative R&D, to internal engineering and cell testing programmes that support these projects. Working closely with the engineering, research and operations teams, you will turn agreed scope into realistic plans, keep them on track, and make sure that what we have committed to is delivered on time and to the standard our partners expect.

Main responsibilities will include:

• Lead the planning, coordination and delivery of customer and partner programmes end-to-end, setting clear objectives, timelines, responsibilities and deliverables from the outset.
• Work with the Technical and Business Development Leads to build and maintain project plans, and monitor progress against agreed timelines, budgets and deliverables.
• Manage our grant-funded projects (Innovate UK and similar), including consortium coordination, quarterly reporting and claims, and keeping deliverables in line with the funder's requirements.
• Coordinate internal engineering and cell test programmes across the mechanical, electronics, and lab teams, to ensure test schedules, hardware builds and analysis are sequenced and resourced correctly.
• Maintain the overall programme plan and lab capacity view, flagging conflicts between projects early and proposing options to resolve them.
• Run project reviews and steering meetings, recording and following up on actions and decisions, and make sure open issues get a timely decision and are escalated and closed out.

You will report to the CEO and work across the whole company. This is a hands-on role in a small team: you will be expected to get into the detail of the technical work, understand the engineering behind the projects, and help clear any obstacles, rather than managing projects from a distance. Your contributions will help shape our project and engineering processes as the company scales.

Requirements

We are looking for an experienced programme manager who can demonstrate the following:

• A degree (or equivalent) in Engineering, Science, Project Management, Business or a related discipline.
• A minimum of 5 years of experience managing technical programmes, ideally in automotive, battery, energy storage or a similar hardware R&D environment.
• A track record of delivering multi-workstream projects with external customers or partners, on time and within budget, managing timelines, risks, dependencies and competing priorities.
• Experience managing publicly funded collaborative R&D projects (e.g. Innovate UK, APC or Horizon Europe), including reporting and claims.
• Comfortable working with engineers and scientists, and able to follow technical discussions on battery cells, test and characterisation.
• Strong organisational and communication skills, with the ability to present clearly to senior stakeholders at customers and partners.