Head of Research & Development

About the role

Onodrim is building Europe's largest defence and industrial platform. We acquire specialist manufacturers in critical defence and dual-use supply chains, then invest behind their growth with capital, technology and operating know-how.

OnodrimX is our internal R&D unit. It builds the products and technologies that the platform needs and that no one in our supply chain makes yet – sensor, compute and communications systems that combine hardware, firmware and software – and takes them from concept through prototype to demonstration with real users. The Head of R&D leads it.

This is a delivery role first. You'll come from an engineering background and will need the judgement that comes with it, but your job is to set goals and milestones, decompose them into work the team can execute, run a mixed team of software and hardware engineers, and make sure the dates are met. Demonstrations with customers and partners are the forcing function; you'll own getting there.

You'll also own the team's growth – hiring the engineers OnodrimX needs as the programme portfolio grows – and the question that makes this R&D unit different from most: how what we build gets industrialised and owned by the manufacturers we acquire.

What you'll do

• Set goals and milestones. Translate the company's priorities into a small number of R&D programmes with clear objectives, demonstration targets and dates, and keep the portfolio honest about what it can actually deliver.
• Decompose and plan. Break each programme into sub-systems, work packages and tasks across hardware, firmware and software; sequence them around long-lead items, supplier deliveries and test windows; make the dependencies visible.
• Run the team. Manage a team of software and hardware engineers day to day – setting priorities, undertaking reviews, problem-solving and unblocking bottlenecks, and making good decisions, keeping cadence tight
• Hold the dates. Track progress against milestones weekly, spot slips early, and fix them by cutting scope, re-staffing or changing approach rather than extending the timeline by default.
• Deliver the demonstrations. Own the path to each customer and partner demonstration – test plans, field logistics, integration with partner systems – and make sure what is shown works.
• Make the technical calls. Decide build vs. buy, which commercial components and platforms to standardise on, and when a prototype is good enough to move forward; escalate the few decisions that need the CTO.
• Hire and grow the team. Define the roles OnodrimX needs, run the hiring, and onboard engineers so they are productive in weeks; develop the people you have.
• Manage suppliers and partners. Run the vendors, contract manufacturers, research institutes and technology partners the programmes depend on; hold them to commitments.
• Plan the hand-off. From the first prototype, design for industrialisation: documentation, bill of materials, cost, test and qualification, so that an acquired manufacturer can take the product over and build it at scale.
• Integrate with the portfolio. Work with portfolio-company engineering and production teams, and with our Forward Deployed teams, to transfer R&D outputs into real products – and bring their constraints back into what OnodrimX builds.
• Run the function. Own the R&D budget, lab and test equipment, development process and the engineering standards the team works to.

What you'll bring

• A degree in engineering, computer science, physics or a closely related technical discipline.
• 7+ years in engineering, including at least 4 years hands-on building hardware, embedded or software systems before moving into leadership.
• At least 4 years leading engineering teams through delivery: you have owned the plan, the people and the date for products that shipped or systems that were demonstrated to real users.
• Experience running mixed hardware and software development – you understand PCB spins, enclosures, firmware, supply lead times and test cycles as well as software release cadence.
• A demonstrable method for planning and tracking: milestone definition, work breakdown, dependency management, risk tracking – and the judgement to keep it lightweight.
• A track record of hiring strong engineers and building a small, high-output team.
• Enough technical depth to review a design, challenge an estimate and decide between two architectures, without needing to be the best engineer in the room.
• Experience taking prototypes towards production – design for manufacture, cost, documentation, qualification – or working closely with a manufacturer that did.
• Clear, direct communication in English, written and spoken.
• Willingness to travel across Europe to test sites, partners and portfolio companies, with occasional travel to the US.
• Right to work in the UK, Switzerland or the EU, and eligibility for a national security clearance in at least one of our operating countries.

Nice to have

• We operate our business in English but fluency in one or more additional European languages is helpful.
• Experience in defence, aerospace, robotics, automotive or another domain where hardware, embedded software and field testing come together under qualification requirements.
• Experience with sensing, edge compute or communications systems, or with integrating into tactical data links and situational-awareness tools.
• Time at a hardware start-up or a skunkworks unit inside a larger company, where you went from nothing to a working system with a small team.
• Experience transferring a product from an R&D team to a manufacturing organisation – your own or an acquired one – and living with the consequences.
• Familiarity with export control (EU dual-use, ITAR/EAR) and classified-programme handling.
• An existing national security clearance.
• Experience working with modern data platforms and LLM tooling, and a view on how to apply them to engineering work.