Business Improvement Lead (2 Year Secondment) - Submarines

Business Improvement Lead (2 Year Secondment) -Submarines

Full time

HMNB Devonport, Plymouth

Exciting 2 Year Secondment opportunity in HMNB Devonport.

This is a unique opportunity to gain direct knowledge of the UK submarine in-service programme and exposure to enterprise partners and our customer. This is also a rare chance to lead and influence change within another organisation, with the autonomy to shape your approach and make visible impact. You’ll gain exposure across a wide range of subjects and develop valuable skills in strategy, stakeholder engagement and change leadership, ideal for growth in transformational and business improvement roles.

What you will be doing

Aligned to the First Sea Lord’s (1SL) mandate of a Submarine Maintenance Recovery Plan (SMRP), the Business Improvement Lead in the Performance & Improvement (P&I) team, is part of the Rolls-Royce Devonport organisation working closely with stakeholders across our enterprise partner, Babcock Marine, and our customer, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to drive improvement and maximise submarine availability.

SMRP is an end-to-end system reset of maintenance delivery; it will coordinate, prioritise and measure value delivery through iterative cycles. With strong focus on optimising maintenance and driving improvement within industrial capability & capacity and information management, you will be working collaboratively with teams to understand challenges, identify opportunities, and support the development and implementation of innovative approaches that deliver lasting impact to disrupt the predictable future for submarine availability and avoid the potential peril of breaking CASD.

The role offers significant breadth, with the chance to work across a variety of subjects and focus areas, but it requires a high degree of self-direction, initiative, and the ability to work independently in a dynamic environment.

Responsibilities

You’ll be required to autonomously identify and drive improvement and change to optimise maintenance activity and improve UK submarine availability. Working scope will be across a broad range, often working collaboratively within an enterprise partner organisation to lead and support initiatives whilst navigating resistance and complex stakeholder environments.

Key responsibilities include:

• Proactively identify opportunities for improvement by independently engaging with teams, observing practices, and constructively challenging the status quo to uncover root causes and areas for innovation.
• Collate, analyse, and interpret information and data from a variety of sources with minimal direction, using insight to support targeted and impactful interventions.
• Apply learning from experience (LfE) and draw on relevant examples and proven solutions from Rolls-Royce and other enterprise solutions to shape and inform improvement approaches tailored to the local context.
• Develop and present clear, evidence-based recommendations that reflect critical thinking, initiative, and a strong understanding of the organisation’s challenges, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities.
• Lead and influence the implementation of change initiatives, taking ownership for driving progress, navigating resistance, and embedding sustainable improvements that are informed by best practice and shared learning.

Why Rolls-Royce?

Do you want to have a more direct impact on UK submarine availability? Improve knowledge within the Services Delivery Business Unit (DBU) or have greater exposure to our enterprise partner Babcock Marine, and our MoD customer?

If so, now is the time to join the Devonport P&I team. Join us as a Business Improvement Lead and you will uncover a unique dockside opportunity to support the UK submarine in-service programme and ability to directly influence submarine availability. In this role, you will work closely and interface with enterprise partners and our customer to accelerate maintenance activity through development of collaborative project arrangements, drawing upon submarine programme knowledge, data, and information from diverse sources to identify and deliver business improvement and thought leading insights.

The P&I team is based in HMNB Devonport, Plymouth, UK. Due to the nature of the role, applicants will need to be available to predominantly work on-site with occasional UK travel to enterprise / partner sites. Outside of these requirements, we support hybrid working wherever possible, so you can always be at your best.

Work with us and we’ll welcome you into a culture of caring and belonging where you can be yourself. We will listen first, embrace feedback and act with integrity. We will invest in your continuous learning and development, and make sure you have access to a wide breadth and depth of opportunities to grow your career and make a difference.

We offer excellent development, a competitive salary and exceptional benefits. These include bonus, employee support assistance and employee discounts.

Hybrid working is a way in which our people can balance their time between the office, home or another remote location.  It’s a locally managed and flexed informal discretionary arrangement.  As a minimum we’re all expected to attend the workplace for collaboration and other specific reasons, frequency will depend on business needs, nature of role, what works for the team and for the individual. Discover more on our GBS Service Portal about hybrid working.

Who we’re looking for

Being a part of Rolls-Royce you’ll know we put safety first, do the right thing, keep it simple and make a difference.  These principles form our behaviours. They are an essential component of our assessment process and are fundamental qualities that we seek for all roles. We embrace agility, are bold, pursue collaboration and seek simplicity in everything we do. To be successful in this role you will need skills in:

• Stakeholder engagement/management; strong communication skills, the ability to identify and engage relevant people for consultation and ability to translate complex information to clear briefs. 
• Operational autonomy and the ability to progress workload independently, synthesising information gained to define and unpack complex objectives into actionable plans and scopes of work.
• Engage with challenging asks and approach open-ended questions with a curious mindset.
• Experience in project management practice and business change or improvement, including formal qualifications (e.g. APM, ChPP status, Lean Six Sigma) would be advantageous.
• Knowledge / experience of working in the defence nuclear sector is a significant asset but not essential (e.g. awareness of policies, divisions, systems, data, operations).

Join us & help Rolls-Royce to become a high-performing, competitive, resilient business.

Please be aware that the priority will be given to employees identified as being at high risk. 

The professional level and the salary of the position will be dependent on the skills and experience of the successful candidate. 

It is advised that you inform your current manager of your application for this role.

We are an equal opportunities employer. We’re committed to developing a diverse workforce and an inclusive working environment. We believe that people from different backgrounds and cultures give us different perspectives. And the more perspectives we have, the more successful we’ll be. By building a culture of respect and appreciation, we give everyone who works here the opportunity to realise their full potential.

Learn more about our global Inclusion Strategy

To work for the Rolls-Royce Submarines business an individual has to hold a Security Check clearance. Rolls-Royce will support the application for Security Clearance if you do not currently already have this in place. Due to the nature of work the business conducts and the protection of certain assets we can only progress applications from individuals who are a UK national or, in MoD approved cases, a dual national.

Grade 7-9