Operational Excellence Site Lead

Luton, England, United Kingdom

3/25/2025

Job Description

The Opportunity

We are looking for an Operational Excellence Site Lead to join us at Leonardo in Luton. You will be part of the Electronic Warfare line of business, which is a leader in delivering defence electronics, mission critical systems for situational awareness and electronic warfare.

What you’ll do as an Operational excellence site lead

As Operational excellence site lead you will to lead, develop, and enhance people, processes, culture, safety and customer experience to enable world class production of Leonardo products, supporting sustained business growth.

Typical accountabilities

• Collaborate to advance operational excellence maturity matrix, focusing on effective leadership, strategic planning, and clear communication of objectives.
• Embed into teams and to support the successful delivery of operational excellence improvement projects.
• Utilise a wide toolbox of operational excellence and continuous improvement methodologies.
• Ability to motivate, counsel, and constructively deal with people at all levels. Ability to influence and manage large teams and organization.
• Conducts site visits and performance reviews with Operations management to share best practices, improve staff performance, and achieve operating plan goals
• Drives weekly business unit reviews to identify corrective actions for improving operations performance by
• Ensuring sufficient process and behavior changes occur so that root cause analysis is followed up with rigorous closed loop corrective actions to ensure fault resolution.
• Identifying and communicate any unresolved problems or possible timeline issues along with recommended actions for correction.
• Advocating continuous improvement of products and processes by soliciting for new process improvement opportunities.
• Create, agree and deliver KPIs and maintain the defined operations KPIs to be used to review and inform decision making
• Ensure the provision of operations expertise and capability to the business area projects
• Ensure development of a capable operations team in line with developing business needs which will include proposal of training priorities to support the development of a high performing culture
  

What We Need From You

• Manufacturing or engineering related degree / qualification or relevant experience
• Successful track record of operations management in a high-tech, low to mid volume, high quality environment
• Recognised as an expert in operations, operations framework, manufacturing, leadership principles and business processes
• People management & leadership skills; including effective performance and change management skills (change agent)
• Expert in influencing and negotiating with others using facts, proposals, data and analysis to support line of reasoning
• Communicate operations excellence at a leadership level in a non-technical influencing way
• Ability to partner effectively with operations, project teams, customers and suppliers
• Success in mentoring and coaching in order to grow operational excellence within the business
• Ability to lead, without having reporting authority, large scale key focus area process improvement events and see through to successful implementation
• Negotiating competing priorities both tactical and strategic
• Experience defining and refining solutions that solve business problems
• Commitment to quality and speed-to-market and passionate for innovation
• A data-driven individual
• Self-motivated with uncompromising attention to detail
• Comfortable with ambiguity and change
• Creative and keen to bring new ideas to the programme
• A sense of urgency, drive and energy
• Ability to influence stakeholders at all levels
• Comfortable with liaising and working with 3rd party consultants
• Understanding and practical experience of the Agile project management methodology
  

Desirable Qualifications

• Lean Six Sigma (Green Belt / Black Belt)
  
  

Security Clearance

You must be eligible for full security clearance. For more information and guidance please visit https //www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels

Life at Leonardo

With a company funded benefits package, a commitment to learning and development, and a flexible approach to working hours focused on the needs of both our employees and customers, a career with Leonardo has never offered as many opportunities or been more accessible to as many people.

• Flexible Working Flexible hours with hybrid working options. For part time opportunities, please talk to us
• Company funded flexible benefits Access to private healthcare, dental schemes, Workplace ISA, Go Green Car Scheme, technology and lifestyle options (£500 annual allowance)
• Holidays 25 days plus bank holidays, option to buy/sell leave and to accrue up to 12 additional flexi leave days per year
• Pension Award winning pension scheme (up to 15% employer contribution)
• Wellbeing Employee Assistance Programme with access to free mental health support, financial wellbeing support and network groups to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to diversity & inclusion (Enable, Pride, Equalise, Armed Forces, Carers, Wellbeing and Ethnicity)
• Lifestyle Discounted Gym membership, Cycle to work scheme
• Training Free access to more than 4000 online courses via Coursera and Linkedin Learning
• Referral Incentive You can earn a reward for successfully referring a friend or family member
• Bonus Scheme in place for all employees at management level and below
  
  

For a full list of our company benefits please our website here.

Leonardo is a global high-tech company and one of the key players in Aerospace, Defence and Security. Headquartered in Italy, Leonardo has over 45,000 employees, of which 8,000 are based at 8 sites throughout the UK.

At Leonardo UK, we believe that a diverse and inclusive work environment unlocks our people’s full potential and drives innovation and creativity. We work hard to offer a welcoming, accessible and inclusive place to work for all of our people, creating a culture where everyone can thrive, feel safe and have a sense of belonging and connection.

Primary Location

GB - Luton - Cap. Green 300

Contract Type

Hybrid Working

Hybrid