Technical & Engineering Director

Technical & Engineering Director

Precision Manufacturing | CNC | NPI & Industrialisation

Competitive package up to £110,000 total value, depending on experience and capability, comprising base salary, performance-related bonus, car allowance, company pension and benefits.

The Opportunity

Gibbs Gears is a growing UK precision engineering business specialising in high-precision gears, splines, shafts and complex transmission components for demanding aerospace applications.

We are looking for a hands-on Technical & Engineering Director to lead our Manufacturing Engineering function and take ownership of how products are engineered, industrialised and released into production.

This is not a desk-based Director role.

We need someone with strong practical CNC and Manufacturing Engineering knowledge, combined with the leadership capability to develop people, drive NPI, solve difficult technical problems and communicate confidently with customers.

The Role – Industrialise

Your core responsibility is:

Ensure every product is properly engineered, proven and ready before it reaches Production.

You will own the engineering lifecycle from:

Customer Requirement / RFQ → Process Planning → Production Readiness → Manufacturing Readiness → Prove-Out → Industrialisation → Stable Serial Production

You will be the senior Engineering authority for Manufacturing and Production Readiness.

What You Will Own

• Lead, manage and develop the Manufacturing Engineering team.
• Own NPI and industrialisation from customer order through prove-out, first shipment and production handover.
• Own the Gibbs Gears Proven Process, including PRS, GRS, IRS, MRS, Prove-Out and TTR.
• Own manufacturing process planning, routing, CNC/CAM strategy, tooling, fixtures, workholding, gear/grinding processes and process optimisation.
• Own technical governance of CNC programmes, DNC, CAD/CAM, ECR/ECN and Product Configuration Management.
• Lead technical problem solving and Engineering-related OEE recovery.
• Ensure manufacturing processes are capable, repeatable and commercially effective.
• Represent Gibbs Gears confidently in customer and supplier technical discussions.
• Own the Gibbs Gears Technical Roadmap, shaping future skills, processes, technology, automation, metrology and capital equipment.

What We Need From You

You should have:

• Strong practical CNC machining and Manufacturing Engineering experience.
• Proven Engineering leadership.
• Strong NPI and industrialisation experience.
• Strong project-management and execution capability.
• Excellent engineering drawing and GD&T / GPS knowledge.
• Strong tooling, workholding and process-planning knowledge.
• Practical CNC programming / CAD-CAM experience.
• Experience of DNC, revision control and ECR/ECN.
• Good understanding of heat treatment, OSP and special processes.
• Experience with complex, tightly toleranced components.
• Strong structured problem-solving capability.
• Excellent customer-facing communication skills.

You should be comfortable operating from:

Leadership Meeting → Customer Technical Review → NPI Project → Shop Floor → CNC Machine

Experience within aerospace, defence or another highly controlled precision manufacturing environment is strongly preferred.

Experience with gears, splines, shafts, gear cutting and grinding would be a significant advantage, but is not essential.

We recognise that deep gear knowledge, aerospace experience and senior Engineering leadership is a rare combination. We will therefore consider exceptional precision Manufacturing Engineering leaders with strong CNC, NPI and industrialisation backgrounds who can demonstrate the ability to develop specialist gear-manufacturing knowledge. Experience of EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) methodology and tools, including Level 10 meetings, Rocks, Scorecards and IDS, would be advantageous.

The Person

We are looking for someone who takes ownership, creates structure, identifies risks early and gets things completed.

You do not need to personally write every CNC programme or be the deepest specialist in every process.

You do need the technical depth to:

Ask the right questions → Challenge the answer → Understand the risk → Make the decision → Ensure delivery

Why Gibbs Gears?

This is an opportunity to take genuine ownership of Engineering within a growing and well-invested UK precision manufacturing business.

You will have significant influence over how we industrialise new products, develop our Engineering team and invest in future manufacturing technology and capability.

Competitive package up to £110,000 total value, depending on experience and capability, comprising base salary, performance-related bonus, car allowance, company pension and benefits.

Our selection process will include practical manufacturing, NPI and technical case studies designed to demonstrate real-world Engineering and problem-solving capability.