Location: Templecombe, United Kingdom
Thales 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 the major industries of Aerospace, Defence, 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.
Senior Hardware Architect (x3 positions)

SKILLS:

Essential:

• An ability to work collaboratively within a team environment and demonstrate:
• Good interpersonal skills,
• Good communication and presentation skills,
• Proactive “can-do” mentality,
• Logical problem-solving approaches.
• Ability to understand and implement Product Line Engineering strategies
• Ability to technically lead design and development activities, interfacing with other technical disciplines as required.
• The holder of the role must be able to demonstrate knowledge of the following:
• Systems Engineering Toolsets, Practices and Lifecycles

Desirable:

• Hardware design and development.

EXPERIENCE:

Essential:

• A minimum of five years’ experience in a Systems Engineering role in an appropriate engineering field, e.g. Maritime, Aerospace, Defence.
• Equivalent experience in a relevant technical field, either mechanical or electronics design will also be considered.

Desirable:

• Experience working on underwater acoustics and/or sonar.
• The design of equipment for the sub-sea environment.
• Experience with Design for Cost / Design for Manufacture, manufacturing specifications and transition to production environment.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Essential:

• L6 Qualification (degree or equivalent in mechanical/electronics/electrical engineering or scientific discipline).

Desirable:

• Chartered Engineer
• L7 Qualification (Masters or equivalent in mechanical/electronics/electrical engineering or scientific discipline).

ABOUT THE ROLE:

• To perform a subset of the system engineering activities required to develop a component or sub-system within the Anti-Submarine warfare (ASW) Conformal Array Projects.
• To be technically responsible for the hardware architecture and its consistency with the solution/system architecture.
• To coordinate with the Lead Hardware Architect in order to make sure that the top-down refinement of the solution is consistent with the Sonar Hardware Products (SHP) strategy and constraints including COTS selection and components reuse.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND TASKS:

• Analyses the customer’s and other stakeholders’ needs whatever the used means (e.g. advanced studies, simulations, mock-ups, models, prototypes,)
• Describes the requirements, functions and interfaces on the component or sub-system.
• Formalises the specification and the architectural design to develop the component or sub-system.
• Prepares and performs the component or sub-system, verification and validation tests
• Ensures that hardware architecture stability is maintained across lifecycle phases from Bid to Delivery.
• Directs and coordinates hardware architecture studies.
• Approves the technical, technological, and methodological choices taken in respect of the selected hardware architecture.
• Guarantees adherence to in-scope standards, reuse policy and product development plans.
• Identifies modelling, simulation and prototyping opportunities.
• Co-ordinates product definition, and assessment of trade-offs between aspects of cost, customer requirements and technological possibilities.
• Prepares the Design & Justification Files.
• Provides knowledge on state-of-the-art hardware architecting, taking account of future developments.
• Monitors technological developments.
• If mechanically or electrically biased in experience, lead the design elements specific for that discipline.