Head of Manufacturing Engineering

The company

Baring Defence is building the United Kingdom's sovereign manufacturing infrastructure for allied drone producers.

As the UK Ministry of Defence and allied governments accelerate procurement of sovereign-manufactured uncrewed aerial systems, drone producers face a critical bottleneck. They have design intellectual property, software, and customer relationships — but lack UK-located, certified, MoD-cleared manufacturing capacity. Building such capacity in-house diverts capital and management bandwidth from their core product development.

Baring Defence is solving this by building the UK's first dedicated sovereign drone contract-manufacturing facility: a purpose-built, certified, high-takt plant producing drones under master services agreements with allied producers.

Our first facility is identified in Swindon; this is a greenfield development. The longer-term plan is to build three manufacturing plants within the same building in phases.

Our manufacturing concept has been developed with EFESO Engineering. The Head of Manufacturing Engineering is the first senior technical hire and will define the technical backbone of the company.

The role

The Head of Manufacturing Engineering will be responsible for architecting, engineering, and future-proofing the UK's first dedicated sovereign drone contract-manufacturing facility. Reporting directly to the COO, this role converts EFESO's conceptual design into a fully engineered, digitally enabled, high-takt production environment — and establishes the technical baseline for all future Baring Defence facilities.

This is the founding technical architect of the company.

In Year 1, you will

• Architect the manufacturing system. Translate EFESO's conceptual design into a platform-based, high-variance manufacturing architecture capable of absorbing product diversity while maintaining a stable, high-takt production backbone.
• Define the automation and Industry 5.0 backbone. Design the secure, air-gapped telemetry and AI stack that monitors machine performance, optimises parameters, predicts failures, and provides real-time insights to engineering and maintenance teams.
• Engineer the physical layout and technical infrastructure. Own the technical design of cell layouts, assembly lines, tooling interfaces, jig footprints, robotics integration, and material-handling flows.
• Establish process provenance and production handover discipline. Define the gatekeeping process where Manufacturing Engineering proves, stabilises, and documents every process before handing it to Operations. Author highly visual SOPs and training frameworks.
• Lock the technical blueprint for Phase 1 and future phases. Partner with EFESO to convert the conceptual design into a GO-level blueprint. Ensure Phase 1 is modular and reconfigurable to integrate Phases 2 and 3 without redesign.
• Own site services and utilities. Specify and manage high-voltage power, HVAC, compressed air, cleanrooms, and site utilities. Work with the developer and DNO to secure and manage peak kVA allocation.
• De-risk global equipment procurement. Define technical requirements, run RFQs, select vendors, and lead international FATs for CNC, composites, automated assembly, test infrastructure, and robotics.
• Architect the secure operational stack. Define the requirements for a facility-wide Andon system integrating visual, acoustic, and digital fault reporting across the plant.
• Secure digital build data and manufacturing genealogy. Design the digital architecture that captures torque logs, test parameters, serialisation, and full manufacturing provenance on an air-gapped defence network.
• Establish maintenance and asset-care systems. Build the preventive maintenance strategy, select CMMS software, define critical spares, and establish reliability-centred maintenance practices.
• Build the ME & Maintenance team. Recruit and onboard Facilities Engineers, Automation/Controls Engineers, and the Maintenance Lead — forming the technical backbone of the plant.
• Build the Manufacturing Engineering organisation. Design and build the Manufacturing Engineering function from the ground up — defining its structure, leadership spine, technical standards, and long-term capability. Establish the organisation that will potentially architect, maintain, and scale Baring Defence's sovereign manufacturing system across multiple facilities.

In Year 2 and beyond

• Lead continuous improvement and technical innovation. Drive CI across the plant, champion Kaizen, and lead structured problem-solving to eliminate waste and optimise flow.
• Champion SMED and configuration control. Ensure changeovers between producer designs are engineered, predictable, and completed in minutes — protecting OEE and throughput.
• Own equipment installation and commissioning. Lead SAT, commissioning, and facility sign-off for Phase 1 and future phases.
• Establish CDM 2015 & EHS baselines. Ensure all engineering activities comply with HSE and CDM regulations as the operational client representative.
• Drive world-class OEE. Lead maintenance engineering to achieve near-zero unscheduled downtime through predictive AI alerts and real-time diagnostics.
• Own build data integrity. Ensure 100% data integrity for all produced units, maintaining the digital ledger required for sovereign assurance.
• Define the technical baseline for Facilities 2 and 3. Architect the replication strategy for future plants, ensuring consistency, modularity, and sovereign-grade performance.

Candidate profile

A senior manufacturing engineering leader from a high-volume, highly automated, lean industrial environment (Automotive, Aerospace, Advanced Electronics, Tier 1 Industrial Components). You bring deep experience in automation, tooling, layout design, and asset care — and you are ready to build a sovereign-grade facility from the ground up.

You thrive at the genba, understand platform manufacturing, and know how to design systems that scale. Defence experience is a bonus; engineering mastery is essential.

Personal attributes that matter

• Hands-on CI and Kaizen practitioner
• Engineering-to-Operations bridge
• Deep experience designing and running platform-based, high-variance production systems
• Industry 5.0 & cyber-physical automation savvy
• OEE-obsessed reliability engineer
• Architectural thinker who designs systems that scale cleanly
• Deep understanding of site services & utilities
• Comfortable with ambiguity and greenfield build
• Pragmatic, capital-efficient decision-maker
• Cultural fit with a founder-led business

Apply

Every application is read in strict confidence. Prefer email? Write to mtrowbridge@baringdefence.co.uk.