Engineering Tools Manager

Lieu : Herstal, Belgium

Mission

Thales Belgium, Herstal site, is a world leader in precision-guided rocket systems for helicopters and jet aircraft . To support its ambitious production and product development roadmap, Thales is strengthening its Engineering organization with an ENGINEERING Tools Manager to accelerate digital transformation and support product development based on Model-Based Design, V-cycle and iterative development methodologies .

As Engineering Tools Manager , you will be responsible for the functional management of the Engineering tool landscape , contributing to improving the quality, maturity and efficiency of Engineering processes and deliverables.

You will act as the interface between Engineering, IS/IT and Thales Engineering organizations , ensuring that tools effectively support Engineering teams throughout the product lifecycle .

Responsibilities

• Understand Engineering needs: develop a strong understanding of Engineering activities, to transform into tools and ways of working; identify, analyze and prioritize tool and digitalization requirements.
• Own the functional Engineering tool landscape: define the tool roadmap, evaluate solutions, manage the lifecycle of tools and identify opportunities for improvement, standardization and rationalization.
• Configure and deploy tools: translate Engineering requirements into functional configurations and ensure that tools effectively support user needs and existing Engineering practices.
• Support the product development lifecycle: ensure that Engineering tools effectively support activities across requirements, architecture, design, development, integration, verification and validation.
• Support Engineering software tools: contribute to the identification, deployment and improvement of tools used by Embedded Software teams, including solutions supporting software development, automated testing and CI/CD practices.
• Support different development approaches: understand Model-Based Design, V-cycle, Agile and iterative development methodologies and ensure that the Engineering tool landscape is aligned with the corresponding ways of working.
• Drive adoption and user enablement: act as the Engineering Tools focal point, provide user support, develop documentation and deliver training.
• Collaborate with IS/IT: work closely with IS/IT, which provides and manages infrastructure, platforms and core IT services, while ENGINEERING Tools owns the functional configuration, deployment, usage and user enablement of Engineering tools.
• Collaborate across Thales: work with Engineering teams from other sites and Group organizations to share best practices, promote standards and leverage common solutions.
• Drive continuous improvement: identify opportunities to improve tool usability, integration, automation and Engineering productivity through the effective use of digital tools.

Profile

• Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, IT or a related technical field.
• Experience in an R&D or industrial Engineering environment, ideally with experience managing, deploying or supporting Engineering tools and applications.
• Strong understanding of Engineering activities and product development processes, with a genuine interest in understanding how products are designed, developed, integrated and validated.
• Good understanding of the product lifecycle and development methodologies, including Model-Based Design, V-cycle, Agile and iterative approaches.
• Ability to understand Engineering processes and translate user and business needs into effective functional tool configurations and solutions.
• Strong interest in digital tools and their practical application to improve Engineering efficiency, quality and maturity.
• Good project management, analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work transversally and influence stakeholders without direct authority.
• Proactive, autonomous and user-oriented, with a strong interest in continuous improvement and digital transformation.
• Comfortable working in an international, multi-site environment and collaborating with teams across different organizations and cultures.
• Knowledge of following tools are an advantage: Polarion, Jira, Git, Jenkins, Blackduck, SonarQube, PowerBI, …
• Fluent in English and French; Dutch and German are a plus.