About The Role
Engineered to Protect, that’s our promise, we protect what matters - our nations, our waters, our land, our cities, our people, our environment, our world. As Production Manager, you’ll be accountable for the daily leadership of SEA's production, ensuring that manufacturing activities are safe, efficient, controlled and capable of delivering on quality, time, and cost. This position acts as the key operational lead on the shop floor and is pivotal to maintaining predictable delivery performance in a low volume, high variety defence manufacturing environment.
The Production Manager will be based at our Barnstaple site with an on-site presence required through the week.
The salary for this role is up to £70k, depending on experience.
What you're doing
- Leadership of Production Operations – you’ll lead production activities, maintaining a strong presence to support issue resolution and provide direction.
- Manufacturing Execution and Flow Management – you’ll execute the production schedule, monitoring and ensuring compliance to build standards documentation and config control.
- Quality, Compliance & Continuous Improvement – you’ll support root‑cause investigation and corrective actions, promote right‑first‑time behaviours, and champion 5S, ensuring compliance with ISO9001 and AS9100‑aligned production standards.
- People Leadership – you’ll coach and guide the Cell Leaders and production staff, conducting regular 121s and development discussions, motivating the capability toward SEA's vision and objectives.
About our company
At SEA, we develop and deliver advanced solutions to make our world safer, cleaner and more efficient. We provide state‑of‑the‑art applications for naval ship and fleet protection, and undersea surveillance systems. In‑service across the globe, our systems deliver a rapid response to threats and system effectiveness and interoperation. Our systems support an ever‑growing number of navies across the world, and we continue to bolster our already specialist, on‑the‑ground knowledge of key overseas markets.
What we offer
- Work life balance
- Hybrid/flexible working arrangements
- 25 days' annual leave, plus buy and sell
- Up to 16 days flexi leave accrual
- Half day Fridays
- Reservists in the Armed Forces receive special paid leave
- Family & wellbeing
- Private medical health insurance & Employee Assistance Programme
- All Staff Bonus
- Group Pension Plan of up to 7% employer contribution
- Cycle to work scheme
- Wellbeing Centre
- Sports & Social activities
- Employee Discounts portal – online and in‑store discounts, travel savings
- Life assurance policy
- Publication and recruitment bonus rewards
- Development opportunities, including LinkedIn learning
- Facilities & resources
- Electric vehicle charging points at all sites
- Private seated lunch areas
- Onsite bistro (Barnstaple office) and free hot and cold beverages
- Onsite showers and toiletries provision
- Free onsite parking
The skills you need
- Strong experience in leading a production capability, ideally in a relevant/related industry to defence.
- A vision to implement and embed lean thinking/principles into production activities.
- Ability to lead, inspire and support a large team toward a right‑first‑time approach with a continuous improvement mindset.
- Join us and be part of something smaller – with 500 people in the UK and Canada – doing something bigger: protecting what matters.
If you’d like to know more, please give Dave from our Talent Acquisition Team a call on 03330 041 4172. Or reach out to us on talentacquisition@sea.co.uk.
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