Senior Manager - Defence

About Faculty

Faculty transforms organisational performance through safe, impactful and human-led AI. 

We are Europe’s leading applied AI company, and saw its potential a decade ago - long before the current hype cycle. 

We founded in 2014 with our Fellowship programme, training academics to become commercial data scientists. 

Today, we provide over 300 global customers with industry-leading software, and bespoke AI consultancy for retail, healthcare, energy, and governmental organisations, as well as our award winning Fellowship. 

Our expertise and safety credentials are such that OpenAI asked us to be their first technical partner, helping customers deploy cutting-edge generative AI safely. 

Our high-impact work has saved lives through forecasting NHS demand during covid, produced green energy by routing boats towards the wind, slashed marketing spend by predicting customer spending habits, and kept children safe online. 

AI is an epoch-defining technology. We want people to join us who can help our customers reap its enormous benefits safely.

About the role

Faculty has developed a large portfolio of work that supports the defence community in the UK and its allies. This includes long-running programmes and strategic partnerships with the Ministry of Defence.

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Manager to join our dynamic team. The successful candidate will play a pivotal role in providing strategic direction, managing programme delivery and shaping the direction of our work in the sector through acting as a trusted advisor on AI to the community.

What you'll be doing:

As a Senior Manager, you will be joining the Defence Business Unit at Faculty, supporting both new sales and programme delivery. Your responsibilities will be to:

• Manage and support account growth, by staying close to the priorities of customers, entrepreneurially identifying opportunities and supporting business development activities with senior colleagues..
• Build trusted relationships. You are comfortable working with senior stakeholders, building trust through delivery excellence and an increasing mastery of how Al can be put to work to solve our customers' hardest problems.

• Help build the defence business unit, by taking a proactive role in developing good processes and practices that develop the team and help us deliver on our objectives.
• Support the development of individuals in Faculty's delivery team-providing coaching on areas for improvement and opportunities to develop as to maximise their potential.

• Oversee delivery across a portfolio of projects, as the senior point of contact for the client and Faculty teams day to day with support from senior technical and commercial management. You'll know when to stay close or step back, pre-empt and manage risks and support Faculty teams to deliver our work to the highest level of quality.
• Ensure the quality of client deliverables, lead communications and ongoing scope management. Data science and Al is necessarily experimental, you'll be responsible for guiding clients through projects constantly balancing scope to maximise client value while ensuring sustainability of delivery for teams and margins.

Who we are looking for:

• Have 7+ years experience of successful technology delivery, with significant expertise in national security, either within or external to the UK defence sector. You are likely from a defence, government, technology or data background.
• Client communication: Be highly credible in dealing with senior stakeholders, with exceptional verbal communication skills, and the ability to boil down complicated concepts to their essence.
• Leadership: Have experience in leading project teams to successful outcomes-not just by directing, but also coaching team members to make the right decisions.
• Project management: Demonstrate success in delivering highly complex and nuanced technical programmes, which require juggling multiple internal and client teams across varied departments and disciplines.
• Technical aptitude: Have experience of working with technical teams and delivering technical projects with some (but not exhaustive) technical understanding. 
• Business development: Be able to talk persuasively about how Al and data can be used to solve problems, and be able to guide clients creatively on how these can be applied to a particular customer's needs. Experience in proposition development and elements of sales is desirable.
• Self-starter: Have an ability to quickly understand what needs to be done in situations with high ambiguity, and proactively identify and implement solutions to address that.

We encourage you to apply if you think that you meet most, but not all, of the requirements.