Director, North East Space Skills and Technology Centre (NESST)

About the role

The North East Space Skills and Technology Centre (NESST) will house world-leading space experts and unite industry with academia and aims to transform the UK space economy. Northumbria University is creating this £50 million Centre after major funding awards were confirmed from the UK Space Agency and Lockheed Martin Space UK. Located in the heart of Northumbria University’s Newcastle city campus, NESST will be a new national space asset that brings together industry and academia to collaborate on internationally significant space research and technological developments, as well as providing specialist education and training to ensure the UK space sector has the highly-skilled workforce it needs in the future. NESST is expected to directly support the creation of over 350 jobs into the North East economy and inject over £260 million over the next 30 years, playing a critical role in the government’s levelling-up agenda and immediately becoming a catalyst for the wider development of the UK space sector in the North East region, as well as building collaborations nationally and internationally with other like-minded institutions.

Working with a team of world-leading space academics, this new role will provide strategic leadership and operational delivery to create a world-leading space skills, research and technology Centre. This will involve leading the strategic and operational performance, delivery and innovation of the Centre including all people, finance, and service delivery plans. You can find out more about our space academics on our space research webpages.

Further information is available in the job description.

About you

To lead this significant change, challenge and opportunity, we are seeking to appoint an ambitious Director. As a highly credible leading authority in the space sector with widespread recognition, you will have held high-profile roles and will bring demonstrable commercially focused strategic experience from working in large, complex, and dynamic organisations.

You will be highly skilled in influencing, advocacy, negotiating and building successful relationships with the space industry and other key partners and a track record of providing vision and leadership to enable delivery.

This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the leadership of a bold, progressive, and ambitious university that delivers real-world impact and to contribute significantly to its future position at a time of significant change in Higher Education. If you have the right experience, skills and track record of success and share Northumbria’s drive and ambition, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Further information is available in the person specification.

For informal questions or enquiries please contact Professor John Woodward, Executive lead for NESST at john.woodward@northumbria.ac.uk or Professor James McLaughlin (Head of the Solar and Space Physics research group) at james.a.mclaughlin@northumbria.ac.uk.

To apply for this vacancy please click 'Apply Now'. Your application should include a covering letter (up to four A4 pages) and a CV which clearly sets out your extensive experience and achievements as a leading authority in the space sector, and includes your successes influencing, negotiating and building successful relationships with the space industry and other key partners; your track record of providing vision and leadership to enable delivery; developing and delivering large and complex strategic business cases; and experience of winning new business.

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