Technical Product Owner, Hardware Engineering Environments

Salary: £66,000 - 106,000 per year

Requirements:

• Practical experience working in a hardware engineering environment.
• Strong understanding of hardware engineering processes and best practice.
• Knowledge of one or more of these disciplines: mechanical engineering, electronics, interconnect and cabling, or FPGA engineering.
• Experience defining, architecting, implementing, or managing engineering development environments.
• Ability to understand user needs and translate them into effective technical solutions.
• Experience prioritising work, managing backlogs, or coordinating delivery across technical teams.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience with engineering applications or equivalent platforms is advantageous, including PLM/PDM tools such as Windchill, Teamcenter, or ENOVIA; MCAD tools such as Creo Parametric, NX, CATIA, or SolidWorks; ECAD tools such as Cadence Allegro or Altium Designer; Siemens Capital; simulation tools such as Ansys, COMSOL, Abaqus, or MATLAB; FPGA tools such as AMD Vivado or Intel Quartus; Polarion or DOORS; Git; and Agile/ALM tools such as Jira, Bitbucket, or Confluence. Experience with every listed tool is not required; equivalent applications will be considered.
• A bachelors degree in Mechanical, Electronic, Electrical, or a related engineering discipline would be beneficial. Relevant professional experience may be considered in place of formal qualifications.
• The role requires UK nationality and the ability to achieve Security Clearance (SC) without caveats. Applicants who do not currently hold SC must undergo, achieve, and maintain it before employment begins. Subject to MOD approval, a dual national from a non-ITAR country may be considered. Full SC eligibility generally requires UK residence for the last five years; in some circumstances, at least three years residence in the UK during the last five years may be accepted, with additional overseas checks.

Responsibilities:

• Represent engineering users needs and champion effective ways of working.
• Own and prioritise the teams product backlog.
• Define requirements, acceptance criteria, and feature priorities.
• Validate and approve completed features.
• Collect user feedback through reviews and ongoing engagement.
• Lead the evolution, consolidation, and migration of hardware engineering applications.
• Align UK engineering toolsets with Thales Group workbench roadmaps.
• Define and deliver modern engineering environment solutions across secure networks and, where appropriate, cloud platforms.
• Drive the retirement of legacy tools and reduction of technical debt.
• Plan programme data migration, retention, or archiving.
• Make technical and product decisions for the area.
• Ensure engineering practices, processes, tooling, infrastructure, and internal services work effectively together.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Technical Leads, Portfolio Managers, and Delivery Managers to deliver the wider engineering applications strategy.

Technologies:

• Altium Designer
• Architect
• BitBucket
• Cloud
• Confluence
• FPGA
• Git
• Hardware
• Support
• JIRA
• Matlab
• Nx
• Product Owner
• Security
• Network

More:

We are Thales, a global technology leader with more than 83,000 employees across five continents and over 7,500 people in the UK. We work across defence, space, aerospace, and digital security, developing technology and services that support the security and stability of the UK and deliver social value. We are transforming how engineering tools and services are delivered and are seeking a Technical Product Owner – Hardware Engineering Environments to help build secure engineering environments across Thales UK. You will help modernise tools used by more than 500 hardware engineers, working with an agile development team and the wider Technical Leadership team. You will represent engineering users and act as the Technical Authority and Architect for your area, with key design decisions agreed through the Engineering Applications Portfolio Design Authority. The role can be based in Crawley, Reading, Cheadle, Bristol, Glasgow, Templecombe, Belfast, or another Thales UK site, and is full time. Benefits include a performance-related bonus, a half day on Fridays, 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays with the option to buy up to 40 hours per year, 24 hours of paid volunteering, private healthcare, a pension scheme, life cover, an Employee Assistance Program, a mental wellbeing app, employee discounts, and gym membership discounts. We offer equal opportunities, pay, and working conditions, and are committed to a workplace where everyone feels valued.

last updated 39 week of 2026