Chief of Staff (m/f/d)

Job description

Mission Brief Support our CTO and help us keep Europe's launch capability on track! As Chief of Staff to the CTO, you will act as the CTO's deputy in the internal programme and product forums, sitting in the rooms where technical decisions are made on their behalf. You will understand how our programmes actually run, spot bottlenecks before they materialise, and drive the teams that hit them back onto a credible path. This is an engineering role first. You are not a representative of the CTO externally — you are the person who covers for them internally when they cannot be in the room, and who makes things happen in their place. Your role in our space mission Deputise for the CTO in product and programme meetings, reviews and decision forums, and carry the outcome back with a clear view of what was decided and what it means Build a deep, current understanding of how each programme runs — dependencies, critical paths, interfaces between engineering, production, quality and AIT — rather than relying on status reporting Identify bottlenecks early, before they turn into schedule or cost problems, and drive their resolution with the responsible teams Take ownership of programmes that have drifted, define the corrective path and get them back on track Provide the CTO with a technically grounded, unfiltered view of programme health and the risks that are not yet visible in the plans Follow up on decisions and commitments made in the CTO's name, and close them out or escalate them early Spend real time in the labs, on the shop floor and in AIT to form your own judgement Qualification Checklist Degree in engineering or a comparable technical discipline, with several years of hands-on engineering or programme experience in aerospace, space, defence or another complex hardware environment Have delivered or recovered hardware programmes with real technical, cost and schedule risk — ideally through development, industrialisation or ramp-up Understand how complex technical programmes actually fail, and can find the constraint before it becomes critical Technically credible enough to follow a design review, a production-readiness argument and an AIT non-conformance, without pretending to be the deepest expert in the room Work through influence rather than line authority, and are trusted by VPs, Chief Engineer and Programm leads alike Communicate clearly and directly at ex…