Senior Munitions Programme Lead

Onodrim Industries; Zürich; On-site; CHF 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Onodrim Industries in Switzerland seeks a Programme Manager for Munitions to lead cross-border programmes from scope to acceptance, coordinating with plants, authorities and partners across Europe. You will drive requirements, risk management, budget and schedule while ensuring explosive safety and licensing are integral to every step.

The role requires deep understanding of warhead designs, energetic materials, and munitions production, plus hands-on engineering experience and the ability to

Qualifications

• Degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, mechanical or aerospace engineering, physics or a closely related discipline.
• 5+ years in munitions field bringing deep understanding of the market as well as warhead designs, energetic materials or munitions production, ideally, including at least 3 years hands-on as an engineer before moving into programme or product responsibility.
• At least 2 years running programmes or projects with real ownership: budget, schedule, suppliers, authorities and a customer who signs off.
• Working knowledge of energetic materials and their industrial base - secondary explosives, PBX and melt-cast fills, propellants, components - and where European supply is concentrated or fragile.
• Familiarity with munitions qualification and safety frameworks, hazard classification and national explosives licensing, and experience working with the authorities that administer them.
• Experience with test-range trials or qualification campaigns, ideally with a defence customer or national test authority.
• Comfort managing external partners - plants, suppliers, institutes, subcontractors - and holding them to commitments.
• Structured, numbers-driven working style: risk registers, test plans and status reports that someone can act on.
• Clear, direct communication in English, written and spoken, with engineers, plant managers, authorities and customers alike.
• Willingness to travel extensively across Europe - plants, test ranges, partners, portfolio companies.
• Right to work in Switzerland or the EU, and eligibility for a national security clearance in at least one of our operating countries.

Responsibilities

• Run the programme. Own scope, plan, budget, risk register and schedule for each programme you're assigned; report status weekly in numbers, escalating early, and land it.
• Write the requirement. Turn a customer need, a capacity gap or a strategic decision into a requirement, a qualification plan and acceptance criteria - performance, safety, rate, cost - that engineers can build to and authorities can sign off.
• Manage the parties. Coordinate plants, raw-material and component suppliers, test authorities, research institutes, partner companies and portfolio-company teams; negotiate statements of work, hold them to milestones and resolve conflicts.
• Judge the engineering. Chair design and process reviews, read test, qualification and safety data, challenge formulation, filling and assembly choices, and decide when something is good enough to proceed.
• Run the qualification and trials. Plan and execute safety testing, qualification campaigns and firing trials with the relevant national and NATO authorities, and turn the results into decisions.
• Hold the safety and compliance bar. Make explosive safety, hazard classification, licensing, storage, transport and export control part of every plan and every review on your programme.
• Support the deal team. Contribute the munitions-domain view to technical and operational diligence of acquisition targets and partnerships: what they can actually make, safely and repeatably, and what it would take to scale it.
• Bridge to the portfolio. Take programme outcomes into the companies we own - a product to industrialise, a line to bring up, a process to fix - and work with their teams and our Forward Deployed Operators to make it stick.
• Feed the strategy. Bring what you learn on the programme - technology, suppliers, customers, competitors, raw-material risk - back to the leadership team to shape what Onodrim invests in next.

Skills

Munitions domain

Program management

Budget & schedule

Stakeholder mgmt

Engineering background

English communication

Travel readiness

Education

Chemistry degree

Chemical/Mechanical/Aerospace engineering

Physics degree

Job description

Onodrim Industries in Switzerland seeks a Programme Manager for Munitions to lead cross-border programmes from scope to acceptance, coordinating with plants, authorities and partners across Europe. You will drive requirements, risk management, budget and schedule while ensuring explosive safety and licensing are integral to every step.

The role requires deep understanding of warhead designs, energetic materials, and munitions production, plus hands-on engineering experience and the ability to