Product Manager
Chemring Countermeasures is a world leading and innovative company, designing and developing countermeasure solutions to armed forces throughout the world. We are part of the Chemring Group of companies and have a solid global infrastructure, which also helps us to thrive.
Overview of the role
The Product Manager is responsible for defining and owning the product strategy, lifecycle, status, and the controlled application of the approved product design configuration across the business. Acting as the primary business and customer advocate, this role ensures that products deliver maximum value, meet customer needs, maintain design configuration integrity, align with Product Policy, and comply with all relevant standards and regulations.
Responsibilities
- Act as the authoritative source of product status and configuration, resolving discrepancies across the business.
- Accountable for the full product lifecycle from concept development, design support, launch, and growth through to sustainment and retirement.
- Maintain a clear and accurate view of approved design status, product maturity, and NPP progression, and ensure consistent application of build standards across contracts with clear control of any differences.
- Accountable for the through-life performance, consistency, and integrity of products.
- Manage and define the build standard configuration of the product(s) for each Customer/Contract using design data released and approved by the Design Authority.
- In consultation with the Design Authority, Configuration Control and Operations, accountable for the scheduling and implementation of design releases.
- Ensure an understanding of the current market perception of the product and instigate product updates based on market feedback, providing evidence-based recommendations to guide investment and resource allocation.
- Responsible for leading product related reviews, decision milestones, and cross functional meetings. Support design reviews, verification, validation, and qualification activities from a product perspective.
- Liaise with the Quality, Engineering and Innovation departments regarding continuous improvement initiatives and facilitate implementation where value to the business can be realized, leading prioritisation of features and enhancements based on customer value, business impact, and technical feasibility.
- Operate a risk register for each product and identify any significant risks associated with procurement, potential obsolescence, manufacturing, testing and/or logistics. Identify risk reduction mitigation measures to ensure product continuity.
- Identify when a product is at end of its life cycle such that the configuration control data pack can be archived and not maintained in subsequent updates to similar products.
- Responsible for ensuring that design, manufacturing, engineering, quality, supply chain, operations, and commercial teams are working to a consistent and current product definition, build standard, and readiness status.
Essential Qualifications, Skills and/or Experience
- Degree or equivalent qualification in Product Management, Engineering, or a related field
- Proven experience in product management or product development
- Experience working across the full development lifecycle, including requirements, design, development, and validation.
- Experience working across multiple functions (e.g. engineering, manufacturing, quality)
- Working knowledge of data systems used to manage product definition and configuration (e.g. PDM/PLM systems), and their role in maintaining a single source of product truth
- Ability to influence, negotiate, and build consensus across multidisciplinary teams.
- 5 Years British Residency (at recruitment)
- Permitted to work in the UK (at recruitment)
Desirable Qualifications, Skills and/or Experience
- Managing Product development & manufacture
- New Product Process (NPP)
- Platform Protection product knowledge
- Understanding of product lifecycle management and how they influence product decisions
- Awareness of configuration control and structured change processes
- Experience working across multiple functions (e.g. engineering, manufacturing, quality)
- Demonstrated experience of assessing product readiness at lifecycle milestones, including identifying gaps in maturity, data completeness, manufacturing readiness, and cross-functional alignment
- Highly organised, resilient under pressure, and focused on delivering high quality outcomes.
This role will be worked over a 4.5 day week; Monday to Thursday 08:00 – 16:45 and Friday 08:00 – 12:30.
Please note: We do not engage with recruitment agencies. We kindly ask that you refrain from sending speculative inquiries or CVs. Should we wish to collaborate with agencies, we will initiate contact accordingly.
