The posting
We're building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.
We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.
Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 200 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe's fastest-growing engineering businesses.
About the role
Rowden already has an excellent systems engineering team, and we already integrate, test and verify complex edge systems. However, the scale, pace and complexity of what we need to prove is changing, and with it our demand for a rigorous, end-to-end verification & validation (V&V) capability.
Our systems bring together software, compute, networks, radios, sensors, user devices and increasingly autonomous behaviour. They have to work across denied, degraded, intermittent and low bandwidth networks, where system behaviour shifts as connectivity and available resources shift. Right now, too much of our evidence that a system works comes from late, bespoke, one-off test campaigns rather than a coherent V&V strategy applied from the start. It is often manual and hard to reuse, which slows everyone down and leaves gaps between what we've proven and what we've assumed.
So, we are investing properly in V&V, and we're looking for the person to own it. V&V is the broader discipline: deciding, for every requirement and every stakeholder need, what evidence is needed and how best to get it, whether that's test, analysis, inspection, demonstration, modelling or simulation. System Integration & Test (SI&T) is one of the most important execution capabilities within that discipline, and will sit within your remit: building the reusable test and evaluation infrastructure, integrating real systems, and proving they work under realistic conditions. The goal is a world-leading V&V capability for edge information systems, built on reusable methods and infrastructure rather than one-off rigs, so we can verify and validate earlier, far more often, and with evidence we can trust.
Executed well, this will significantly speed up the time it takes to get technology into users' hands - and give us confidence it will actually work for them when it gets there.
Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.
More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels
Who we're looking for
Someone to own V&V as a discipline, including the System Integration & Test (SI&T) capability that sits within it. Working with others in the Engineering team (Head of Systems, VP Engineering), you will set the technical vision for your area, decide where to focus effort, grow the people, and build the methods, tooling and environments that let projects move faster with real confidence in the evidence behind them.
You need to understand verification and validation deeply enough to know what good looks like across the full range of methods, not just testing, and be excited about designing and evolving a capability, rather than only operating a process. You will also stay close to the work - expect to be technically hands-on, working alongside teams rather than only directing them.
Current titles and years of experience matter less to us than what you can do.
Key areas of responsibility
- Own V&V as a discipline, including SI&T: set the technical vision, decide where to focus investment, and define what good verification and validation look like at Rowden.
- Define the Rowden V&V strategy for complex, multi-disciplinary systems: for each requirement and stakeholder need, ensure the team understand the right methods - test, analysis, inspection, demonstration, modelling or simulation and ensure evidence is proportionate, timely and trustworthy.
- Own and grow our System Integration & Test capability as the primary execution arm of V&V: build and evolve reusable test and evaluation infrastructure that works across projects, replacing bespoke, one-off rigs.
- Build and grow the team, bringing in and developing the people needed to deliver the capability.
- Develop the Rowden standard approach for V&V design and execution across the lifecycle, to be utilised across our portfolio.
- Stay technically hands-on: work alongside project teams to integrate complex systems made up of software, compute, networks, radios, sensors and user devices, and verify and validate that they work under realistic conditions.
- Drive automation of test execution, data capture and analysis so teams get fast, trustworthy feedback.
- Champion simulation and emulation environments that let us explore system behaviour across contested and degraded networks, and use them as first-class evidence sources alongside physical testing.
- Establish how awkward, intermittent failures get reproduced quickly and turned into regression tests that stay.
- Work with project teams across the full systems, software, hardware disciplines so verifiability and testability are designed in from the start.
- Develop and deploy a cross-Rowden method for capture and full lifecycle close of V&V issues and defects, ensuring a closed loop process back into the design cycles.
- Set and raise the engineering standards for verification, validation and test across the business.
Key skills, experience and behaviours
You will keep learning here, but some things you should already bring:
- Real, hands-on experience verifying and validating complex, multi-disciplinary systems, ideally where software, hardware and networks all meet.
- Solid grounding in V&V as a discipline - the distinction between proving a system meets its specified requirements (verification) and proving it meets the user's actual need (validation), and how to choose and combine methods (test, analysis, inspection, demonstration) to get there efficiently.
- A track record of building or significantly maturing a V&V or test and evaluation capability, tooling or standard.
- Strong test engineering fundamentals: you know how to decide what is worth testing, and how to prove something rather than hope it works.
- Demonstrable awareness of distributed communication systems - how they are deployed, and how the trade-offs between different communications bearers and spectrums affect performance.
- Experience with test infrastructure of some kind: hardware-in-the-loop, simulation or emulation, network impairment, instrumentation, or automated test frameworks.
- Proven people leadership: you have hired, line-managed, mentored and developed engineers, and know how to grow a team's capability rather than just its headcount.
- Experience setting technical direction for a discipline or function, and holding the line on standards even under schedule pressure.
- A track record of influencing senior stakeholders and peers (engineering leadership, programme teams, customers) to win investment and buy-in for a capability, not just to execute someone else's plan.
- Comfortable being accountable for a discipline's output across multiple concurrent programmes, balancing hands-on delivery with the time needed to lead and develop others.
- An instinct for reuse: you build tools and approaches other people can pick up.
- Comfort with ambiguity and pace. Our programmes move quickly and the requirements do not always arrive neatly.
- Clear communication with engineers, project teams and customers alike.
Desirable (not essential)
- Formal V&V experience in a regulated environment (e.g. DEF STAN, safety-critical standards), or model-based systems engineering.
- RF, comms, EW or sensing experience.
- Defence (land, maritime or air), aerospace, space or other safety- or mission-critical backgrounds.
- Autonomy and robotics.
About you
You want to work on hard problems, at pace, with people who are very good at what they do. You would rather build something than inherit it. You are happy being told the current approach needs improving, because you will be the one leading that improvement. And you care that what we ship actually works for the person using it at the far end of a bad network.
Working at Rowden
We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!
We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.
Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.
Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!
