Programme Manager - Sensing Systems

Onodrim Industries; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Onodrim Industries is building Europe’s largest defence and industrial platform. The Programme Manager for Sensing leads a single engagement from scope to accepted result, with hands-on field work and partner coordination across Europe.

This role requires a technical background, grating experience in sensor systems, and the discipline to manage budgets, timelines, and users to a successful hand-off. Extensive travel across Europe is needed.

Qualifications

• What you'll bring: degree in electrical or mechanical engineering, physics, geophysics, acoustics, DSP or closely related discipline.
• 5+ years in sensing or sensor systems, with at least 3 years hands-on as an engineer before moving to programmes.
• At least 2 years running programmes or projects with ownership: budget, schedule, external partners.
• Experience with physical signals detection concepts: sensor physics, DSP, deployment effects.
• Experience with acoustic, seismic, vibration sensing or similar modalities.
• Experience with field deployments or operational testing with military or critical infrastructure users.
• Comfort managing external engineering partners and holding to commitments.
• Structured, numbers-driven approach: risk registers, test plans, status reports.
• Clear, direct English communication with engineers, partners and users.

Responsibilities

• Run the engagement: own scope, plan, budget, risk register and schedule; report weekly; escalate early.
• Write requirements: convert needs into ops concepts and system requirements with acceptance criteria.
• Manage the partner: statements of work, milestones, data sharing, IP and terms; resolve conflicts.
• Judge the engineering: chair reviews, evaluate data, challenge choices, decide readiness.
• Run the trials: plan and execute lab tests, field deployments, user demos; turn results into decisions.
• Coordinate our engineers: assign work packages and integrate with partner teams.
• Support the deal team: provide sensing-domain diligence on targets and partnerships.
• Plan the hand-off: design outputs for industrialisation and ownership by a portfolio manufacturer.

Skills

Programme management

Sensing systems

Budget management

Stakeholder communication

Travel readiness

English communication

Field deployments experience

Education

Engineering or related degree

Job description

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.

Sensing is one of the areas where our R&D unit is building real depth – systems that detect, classify and locate activity from physical signals, and the companies and partners that make them. Today that means mostly mechanical waveforms: acoustic, seismic and vibration sensing for perimeter, border and battlefield awareness. We don't intend to stop there; the modalities will follow the problems our customers and portfolio companies bring us.

The Programme Manager for Sensing owns the execution of a specific engagement in that domain – typically a joint development or integration with a partner company, a research institute or one of the manufacturers we acquire – from agreed scope to accepted result. You'll be assigned to one engagement at a time, and it will be yours: the plan, the milestones, the budget, the partner relationship, the trials and the hand-off.

This is a role for an engineer who has moved into running things. You'll need enough sensing depth to judge a design review, read a trials report and tell a partner's schedule from their hope, and enough programme discipline to keep budget, timeline, partners and users fully aligned when all four are moving. You'll spend time in the field and at partner sites, not only in meetings.

What you'll do

• Run the engagement. Own scope, plan, budget, risk register and schedule for the engagement you're assigned; report status weekly in numbers, escalates early, and execute well to completion.
• Write the requirement. Turn a partner's or customer's need into a concept of operations, a system requirement (what to detect, at what range, in what environment, with what false-alarm rate, at what cost and power budget) and acceptance criteria that engineers can build to and users can test against.
• Manage the partner. Be the day-to-day counterpart for the partner company, institute or portfolio company: statements of work, milestones, data sharing, IP and commercial terms in coordination with our deal and legal teams; resolve conflicts before they stall the work.
• Judge the engineering. Chair design reviews, read test data, challenge sensor, processing and deployment choices, and decide when the system is good enough to proceed.
• Run the trials. Plan and execute lab tests, field deployments and user demonstrations in realistic terrain, weather and background-noise conditions, and turn the results into successful decisions.
• Coordinate our engineers. Bring R&D's software and hardware engineers onto the engagement with clear work packages, and keep their work and the partner's integrated.
• Support the deal team. Contribute the sensing-domain view to technical diligence of acquisition targets and partnerships: what they have built, how well it detects, and what it would take to finish and industrialise.
• Plan the hand-off. Design the engagement so its outputs can be industrialised and owned by a manufacturer in the portfolio – documentation, bill of materials, test and qualification – and work with their teams and our Forward Deployed Operators to make it stick.
• Keep it compliant. Manage test-site approvals, data handling, export control and security classification on your engagement.
• Feed the strategy. Bring what you learn – technology, partners, users, competitors – back to the Head of Research & Development to shape what we take on next.

What you'll bring

• A degree in electrical or mechanical engineering, physics, geophysics, acoustics, digital signal processing or a closely related discipline.
• 5+ years in sensing or sensor systems, including at least 3 years hands-on as an engineer – sensor hardware, signal processing, data acquisition, systems or test – before moving into programme or product responsibility.
• At least 2 years running programmes or projects with real ownership: budget, schedule, external partners and a customer who signs off.
• Working knowledge of how physical signals become detections: sensor physics and placement, signal conditioning, digital signal processing, detection and classification, and the environmental and noise effects that limit each modality.
• Experience with at least one of acoustic, seismic, vibration or similar mechanical-waveform sensing, and the curiosity to pick up others.
• Experience with field deployments or operational testing of sensors, ideally with military, border or critical-infrastructure users.
• Comfort managing external engineering partners – companies, 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, partners and users alike.
• Willingness to travel extensively across Europe – partner sites, field deployments, portfolio companies.
• 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; knowledge of a European language other than English is beneficial.
• Military service in a surveillance, reconnaissance, engineer or EW role, or time as a user of unattended ground sensors or perimeter-security systems.
• An existing national security clearance.
• Experience with other sensing modalities – electro-optical/infrared, magnetic, RF or chemical – and with fusing several of them.
• Machine-learning experience on sensor data: detection, classification and tracking models, including running them on low-power edge hardware.
• Familiarity with low-power embedded systems, energy harvesting and long-duration unattended deployments.
• Experience integrating sensors into command-and-control or situational-awareness tools.
• Experience on the supplier side of a defence or security procurement – proposal, qualification, framework contracts.
• Exposure to export control (EU dual-use, ITAR/EAR) and classified-programme handling.
• Experience in a start-up or small team where you did whatever the programme needed.