Job at a glance
As Chief Engineer, you will be responsible for the technical vision, engineering governance and solution integrity of the FJCAST programme. The FJCAST Chief Engineer is the senior technical authority responsible for assuring the delivery of a secure, interoperable, and data-driven Joint Collective Training capability. The role is accountable for integrating simulation, synthetic environments, operational systems, communications, and data services into a coherent training ecosystem that delivers measurable training outcomes, enhances operational readiness, and enables seamless interoperability across UK Defence, NATO, and coalition partners., Provide engineering leadership and act as the Technical Authority across the FJCAST programme, ensuring alignment with programme objectives, technical strategy, operational outcomes, and customer mission requirements.
Own the programme's technical architecture, engineering strategy, and roadmap, leading the development of open, modular, scalable, resilient, and secure architectures that enable integration across Defence, NATO, coalition, and partner training systems. Lead the engineering strategy for modelling, simulation, synthetic environments, and collective training capabilities, ensuring effective federation and integration of Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) training systems to support realistic and operationally relevant exercise delivery.
Ensure technical solutions enable effective planning, design, delivery, execution, and evaluation of Tier 3 and Tier 4 collective training exercises across UK Defence, NATO, coalition partners, and multi-domain operational environments. Serve as the primary technical decision-maker across the partner ecosystem and stakeholder community, providing technical assurance, solution oversight, and engineering direction throughout the programme lifecycle.
Establish and maintain robust engineering governance, assurance, risk management, compliance, configuration management, and technical review processes, ensuring adherence to Defence, NATO, security, and industry standards and regulatory requirements. Develop and sustain strong collaborative relationships with MOD, NATO, coalition partners, industry stakeholders, and senior technical leaders, supporting programme delivery and collaborative working principles across a multi-organisational environment.
Lead systems integration across simulation platforms, exercise management systems, command and control (C2) systems, communications networks, federated compute platforms, edge compute stacks, data services, operational CIS, and digital infrastructure, ensuring a coherent end-to-end training ecosystem. Govern simulation interoperability and information exchange standards, including HLA, DIS, and related Defence and NATO integration frameworks, ensuring seamless interoperability across joint, coalition, and multi-domain environments.
Lead the development and evolution of the programme's data architecture, ensuring training, exercise, operational, and simulation data are exploited as strategic assets to support readiness assessment, lessons identification, experimentation, performance evaluation, and future capability development. Champion the exploitation of training analytics, operational insights, and After-Action Review (AAR) capabilities, enabling evidence-based decision-making, continuous improvement, force preparedness, and operational readiness.
Ensure technical decisions support service continuity, resilience, availability, and operational readiness, maintaining effective service delivery throughout mobilisation, transition, steady-state operations, and capability evolution. Drive innovation and continuous improvement across engineering practices, tools, and methodologies, exploiting emerging technologies including AI-enabled training support, advanced analytics, digital engineering, synthetic environments, cloud technologies, and automation.
Collaborate closely with Programme Director, customer re