Systems Assurance Lead

We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.

Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 200 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe’s fastest-growing engineering businesses.

Role purpose

The Systems Assurance Lead reports to the Head of Systems and leads Rowden's safety assurance and security assurance team and craft. These teams deploy onto live deliveries across all of Rowden's project and product lines. The role also shapes Rowden's approach to assurance within the wider Accelerated Systems Framework (ASF) initiative.

Security engineering applies to the products and systems Rowden designs, builds and deploys. It builds security architecture, operating procedures and the assessments and mitigations needed to show that residual security risk is understood and controlled, distinct from enterprise security accreditation for Rowden's own premises or facilities.

Safety engineering develops our safety approach, including functional and physical hazard identification and analysis, building to a safety argument that articulates residual risk to the risk holder.

The successful candidate is expected to spend the majority of their time on hands-on delivery as a working member of the assurance team while contributing directly to live programmes and supporting the codification of Rowden's assurance practices through the ASF initiative. Their second focus as a Craft Lead is expected to go toward building the safety assurance and security assurance team, with a focus to your people, their performance and maturing the Assurance craft.

Your role is to create the team and tools that gives the people who carry ultimate responsibility for a system, whether Rowden's Chief Engineers or a customer's equivalent, a balanced, evidence-based view of risk, alongside ensuring we’re deploying assurance focused engineers into the design process. Those risk holders rely on Rowden's technical Suitably Qualified and Experienced Person (SQEP) judgement so they can focus on front-line operations across defence, emergency response, critical national infrastructure (CNI) and other regulated sectors.

Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.

More information about security clearance is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels

Team structure 

The Principal Engineer Craft Lead line manages a highly capable team of systems focussed safety assurance and security assurance engineers, deployed onto Rowden's live projects and products with a mandate to support them through life. The team designs for safety and security, identifies technical and procedural mitigations to risk, and presents and advises the relevant Chief Engineer on the residual risk of the system. This role works as a hands-on member of that team, contributing directly to deliveries, and is the team's first port of call for advice or direction on assurance approach and for escalated support on assurance issues. As a craft lead, this role also carries career development, craft and performance management accountability for the team. 

This team does not operate as a review function sitting above the delivery team. They are core engineers with broad systems engineering skillsets, and a specialism for safety and security. This distinction is a culturally significant, and the hands-on nature of our assurance teams is, in our view, what enables us to move fast on delivery whilst also increasing the overall risk mitigation and articulation given our assurance teams are deep in the technical detail. Retaining this approach as we scale the business is seen as a vital accountability for the role holder.