Project Manager - Design Engineering

Fantastic challenges. Amazing opportunities.

GKN Aerospace is reimagining air travel: going further, faster and greener! Fuelled by great people whose expertise and creativity set the standards in our industry, we’re inspired by the opportunities to innovate and break boundaries. We’re proud to play a part in protecting the world’s democracies. And we’re committed to putting sustainability at the centre of everything we do, opening up and protecting our planet. With over 16,000 employees across 33 manufacturing sites in 12 countries, we serve over 90% of the world’s aircraft and engine manufacturers and achieved sales of £3.35 bn in 2023. There are no limits to where you can take your career.

Job Summary

Are you a dynamic leader with the ability to drive customer-focused engineering projects to success? We’re looking for a Project Manager to manage a key customer-specific design engineering program, ensuring seamless execution across scope, schedule, quality, and delivery. In this highly visible role, you’ll serve as the primary interface between the customer, internal stakeholders, and a multidisciplinary engineering team, ensuring alignment, progress, and results. Your leadership will be essential in ensuring on-time delivery, uncompromised quality, and team wellbeing, while balancing customer priorities with operational excellence. This is an opportunity to challenge the status quo and bring disruptive thinking to the way projects are run in the aerospace sector.

What you'll do

• Lead and operationally manage a Design Engineering team, ensuring effective execution of customer-specific projects.
• Act as the primary customer interface, building strong relationships and aligning project scope, requirements, and expectations.
• Develop and maintain project plans, schedules, and deliverables, ensuring progress is tracked and communicated transparently.
• Drive stakeholder management, engaging internal cross-functional teams to meet program commitments.
• Monitor and report performance against key milestones, proactively managing risks and issues.
• Foster a culture of team wellbeing, collaboration, and accountability, empowering engineers to deliver their best work.
• Champion continuous improvement in project execution, efficiency, and delivery practices.
• Champion a positive, inclusive culture aligned with GKN’s Great Place to Work values.

What you'll bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Project Management, Business, or related field.
• 10+ years of complex project management and cross-functional leadership experience, ideally within complex engineering or aerospace environments.
• Project Management certification (e.g., PMP, PRINCE2, IPMA).
• Multiple years of aerospace experience is a strong advantage.
• Strong skills in stakeholder management, team leadership, and prioritization.
• Ability to balance customer demands with operational constraints, ensuring delivery excellence.
• Excellent communication skills and a collaborative leadership style.
• Experience leading engineering design projects in aerospace or other high-technology industries.
• Strong problem-solving abilities, with a proactive and disruptive mindset to challenge the status quo.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver on-time and on-quality while maintaining team engagement and wellbeing.

What we'll offer

• 8% holiday allowance.
• 42 paid holidays for full-time employment in line with the Collective Labor Agreement Metalektro (29 holidays and 13 ADV days).
• An excellent pension scheme (PME) and travel allowance.
• A pleasant and informal working environment, in which we work together to achieve the best result for our customers.
• We are committed to offering you a challenge but also a great opportunity to learn and grow. We want to offer you a career that can go in many directions thanks to our breadth of international opportunities.
• By being part of GKN Aerospace, which has proven itself to be at the cutting edge of our industry, you will know that you are working towards being the most trusted partner in the aerospace industry.
• We will support and promote your professional and personal development.
• Next to a competitive package, we will offer you a world of opportunities: we want to see your career fly! We will support your career progression by providing you with learning and development opportunities.

Who we are

Fokker Elmo, part of GKN Aerospace, is a leading player in the design, manufacturing and support for the Electrical Wiring Interconnection Systems (EWIS) for Aerospace and Defense programs. To make the wiring harnesses, we have everything in-house from start to finish. From complete engineering to our final product, the ready-to-use wiring harnesses, we do this for well-known aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus, Collins Aerospace and Lockheed-Martin. We produce these wiring harnesses worldwide at several sites. In Papendrecht we have approximately 1200 employees. This is what Fokker Elmo is all about: quality and therefore airworthiness.

We’ll offer you fantastic challenges and amazing opportunities. This is your chance to be part of an organisation that has proven itself to be at the cutting edge of our industry and is committed to pushing the boundaries even further. And with some of the best training on offer in the industry, who knows how far you can go?

A Great Place to work needs a Great Way of Working

We are the place where human dreams, plus human endeavour, shape the future of aerospace innovation and technology.