Head of Strategic University Partnerships

This vacancy is not currently eligible for the UK Employee Referral Scheme.

Description

This vacancy is open to permanent and fixed-term BAE Systems employees only. While agency workers have access to relevant permanent opportunities, this role has been designated as an internal opportunity and therefore only permanent and fixed-term employees of BAE Systems are eligible to apply.

You’re expected to have completed 12 months in role prior to applying for an advertised vacancy and you should also discuss the internal opportunity with your line manager to ensure sustained business continuity and to further support your career development.

We know there may be exceptional individual circumstances that impact this, in the first instance please discuss this with your line manager.

If you don’t feel you can talk to your Line Manager, you can contact your HRBP.

PLEASE NOTE: Should you be invited for interview; you acknowledge that the Recruitment team will contact you and your line manager regarding your application for this opportunity.

Head of Strategic University Partnerships

Reporting to the Head of Innovation, The Head of Strategic University Partnerships is accountable for developing and governing the company’s strategic relationships with universities, ensuring that academic collaborations deliver measurable value aligned to corporate objectives. The role requires strong technical credibility, effective stakeholder leadership, and the ability to operate within a complex defence sector environment.

The Head of Strategic University Partnerships will shape and lead the company’s long term academic collaboration strategy, ensuring that university partnerships deliver meaningful innovation, talent, and strategic advantage. Operating as a senior member of the CTIO organisation, this leader will bring strong technical credibility, deep understanding of the academic landscape, and the ability to influence stakeholders across government, industry, and academia.

This role is central to strengthening the company’s research ecosystem, accelerating technology development, and ensuring the company remains a trusted and valued partner within the defence domain.

The role will support the work of the CTIO Technology team through providing perspective, alignment and information. It involves critical thinking and an ability to translate complexity into simplicity for maximum impact. This will be key to understand perspectives and drive outcomes with a wide and varied range of stakeholders across the organisation and externally.

This is a senior role that requires collaboration and engagement across a broad range of internal and external stakeholders. The role requires skills to understand the nature of the partnerships, excellent stakeholder management and influencing, management reporting skills to synergise ambiguous information and ideas into clear executable plans and pathways which can be briefed across multiple levels of the organisation.

Your main responsibilities as Head of Strategic University Partnerships will be to:

· Manage the Strategic University Partnership activities, drive participation and action from across the organisation, manage the partnerships and report accordingly. Work with senior members of the technology team to shape and drive momentum in activities with both organisations.

· Take a relationship driven approach and combine strategic thinking with operational rigour to align diverse stakeholders around a common mission for each of the high value strategic partnerships.

· Create a portfolio view of partnerships to provide a clear pipeline of collaborative opportunities to be explored.

· Facilitate collaboration between internal teams and external partners to ensure alignment and momentum, act as a bridge between strategy and execution, ensuring internal buy in and accountability.

· Develop strategic pipeline view of university partnerships of interest to identify, evaluate and prioritise partnership opportunities for the organisation.

· Establish clear governance frameworks, roles, KPIs and success metrics for partnerships to track, analyse and report on partnership performance and outcomes.

Your skills and qualifications:

Essential

· Knowledgeable and experienced in business development, strategy development, project execution activities

· Proven track record of building and managing complex, multi-stakeholder partnerships

· Experience working cross-functionally in fast moving matrix organisations across multiple levels of organisations

· Strategic mindset with the ability to translate vision into executable plans

· Educated to degree level or above in a relevant technical discipline with a significant track record in a technology focused business environment coupled with demonstrable senior level experience in the defence and security industry, including the application of new and novel technologies in this context.

· Exceptional communication, negotiation and stakeholder management skills, able to effectively communicate vision, hold others to account and influence the broader business to support strategic activities.

· Broad understanding of the BAE Systems business, its target markets, core products and technologies

· Critical thinking skills, with an eye for detail and ability to derive insight from complexity

Desirable

· Masters level / post graduate qualifications in a relevant technical discipline, MBA or similar level business qualification. Hold a Chartered membership of a recognised and relevant professional institution or working towards

· A track record of building, maintaining and strengthening internal & external relationships and partnerships in pursuit of product and technology development.

· Proven experience of defining, developing and delivering complex partnerships and agreements cases.

What we're looking for in you:

Collaboration – You recognise we go far together and are able to leverage ideas and perspectives across a wide group of stakeholders to drive impact.

Creativity – You find a way to get things done in the face of challenge, generate and support ideas that drive efficiency, capability expansion and sharpen our competitive edge. You are curious and open minded, with the ability to create an environment that facilitates and drives creativity in others. You consider other perspectives and alternative approaches to developing solutions whilst maintaining pace and take people with you.

Influencing – You inspire commitment in others to adopt and enact business critical initiatives. You use more than just rational arguments to gain alignment; you know what others find compelling and adapt your style to the person or group in front of you. You can build support for an idea by getting key stakeholders on board and influencing through them.

Committing to the Wider Enterprise – You know that BAE Systems as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You are more than just a good team player; you see how other parts of the business can help you, and how you can help them. You reach out across boundaries including others and when necessary, you put aside the needs of your own group for the greater good.

Location: Flexible, UK with frequent domestic travel

Grade: GG14

Head Office

If you’d like to make a real difference where it counts, BAE Systems is the place for you.

From keeping soldiers, sailors and pilots safe to helping countries prosper, from developing the next generation of supersonic aircraft to investing in the next generation of super-smart talent – at BAE Systems, we work together to give our customers an essential edge in protecting the things that really matter. Lives, livelihoods, ways of life.

As part of the Head Office team, you’ll be at the heart of this endeavour – working closely with our air, maritime, land and cyber and intelligence businesses to support our customers around the world.

We are committed to supporting work life balance for all our employees and embrace a range of modern working practices, which aim to enhance flexibility for individuals whilst also enabling business performance. Flexibility provisions vary by role, but include; hybrid working arrangements, flexible working patterns and shift working.

There are endless opportunities to grow at BAE Systems, and we will build upon the diversity of your experience through supporting your movement across our organisation. Our mission is to support our colleagues reach their full potential and so you’ll always find something new that will continue to inspire and provide an exciting and varied career that continues to play a crucial role in creating a secure tomorrow for generations to come.

We believe when you bring together different people and different perspectives it inspires creativity and drives innovation. It helps us fulfil our purpose and it's integral to our culture. We want everyone to be heard and respected, allowing us all to develop in an inclusive workplace and thrive together. We also want to make sure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. If you have a disability or health condition (for example dyslexia, autism, an anxiety disorder etc.) that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

We welcome applications from all suitably qualified people, who are BAE Systems employees and have been in their current role for 12 months or longer.

Please be aware that many roles working for BAE Systems will be subject to both security and export control restrictions. These restrictions mean that factors including your nationality, any previous nationalities you have held, and your place of birth may limit those roles you can perform for the organisation.

Job: Engineering

Primary Location: Filton

Organisation: Corporate Head Office and Shared Services (GSF)

Closing Date: 23/Oct/26, 10:59:00 PM