Engineering Delivery Manager

Location: Bucharest, Romania
Project: The project focuses on the maintenance, development, and evolution of a safety-critical Air Traffic Control (ATC) system. The role involves coordinating delivery activities for a team of approximately 20 professionals, ensuring system reliability, delivering new features, and improving product performance to meet current and future customer needs.
Role purpose:
The Engineering Delivery Manager (EDM) owns the engineering delivery interface with customers and segments, ensuring that successive product or solution versions are delivered in line with agreed needs, quality expectations and commitments.
The EDM defines the overarching delivery strategy and master schedule, aligns initiative owners and stakeholders, and steers progress, priorities, risks and corrective actions across the engineering lifecycle.
Key responsibilities:
Customer and stakeholder management
Act as the primary engineering delivery interface for customers and segment stakeholders; build trusted relationships and maintain clear expectations.
Coordinate internally with Initiative Owners, Business Managers, Solution Management and engineering teams; communicate a shared delivery vision and strategy.
Delivery strategy and execution
Define the global delivery strategy, multi-version roadmap and associated master schedule, translating customer needs into requirements and a coherent development approach.
Own and coordinate delivery of successive versions to customers and segments; structure the delivery process, milestones, dependencies and commitments.
Align and arbitrate priorities between versions and Initiative Owners, taking decisions when trade-offs or uncertainty arise.
Oversee technical engineering activities across the project lifecycle, including development planning, technical debt, co-contracting and subcontracting.
Performance, quality and risk
Monitor and report delivery progress to the program using dedicated KPIs and the consolidated multi-version backlog.
Identify and manage risks, opportunities and schedule deviations; request root-cause analyses and drive appropriate corrective actions.
Ensure engineering deliverables and proposed solutions meet customer needs and expected quality, including requirements, operational concepts and architecture choices.
Continuous improvement and issue resolution
Plan the deployment of new processes and engineering practices in line with project constraints and delivery priorities.
Facilitate cross-team collaboration and continuous improvement; in coordination with Solution Management, lead targeted deep dives into critical topics when needed (e.g., engineering environment).
Candidate profile
Master’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science or a related university discipline.
At least 7 years of experience in Engineering Management, Technical/IT Project Management or Software Engineering Management.
Proven ability to lead technical teams in complex environments, engage stakeholders and develop collaborative ways of working.
Customer-oriented, persuasive communicator with sound judgment, including in uncertain situations.
Strong commitment to continuous improvement, team development and engineering excellence.
Required competencies
Engineering lifecycle management, delivery planning, scheduling and multi-version coordination.
Ability to review and challenge engineering deliverables: customer needs, operational concept documents (OCD), requirements and architecture decisions.
Risk and opportunity management, delivery KPIs, root-cause analysis and corrective-action follow-up.
Stakeholder influence, priority setting, decision-making and cross-functional collaboration.
Nice to have: Specific domain, product or project knowledge — to be defined by the hiring manager and Talent Acquisition.
Development opportunities
Opportunities to grow across Thales domains, products, customers and locations, and to develop along either technical expertise or leadership career paths, including international opportunities.
Role-specific scope, reporting line, location and domain requirements: to be confirmed by the hiring manager.
At Thales, we’re committed to fostering a workplace where respect, trust, collaboration, and passion drive everything we do. Here, you’ll feel empowered to bring your best self, thrive in a supportive culture, and love the work you do. Join us, and be part of a team reimagining technology to create solutions that truly make a difference – for a safer, greener, and more inclusive world.
Thales is a global technology leader trusted by governments, institutions, and enterprises to tackle their most demanding challenges. From quantum applications and artificial intelligence to cybersecurity and 6G innovation, our solutions empower critical decisions rooted in human intelligence. Operating at the forefront of defence and security, aerospace and space, cybersecurity and digital identity, we’re driven by a mission to build a future we can all trust.
In Romania, we are advancing innovation through software engineering, research and development, delivering solutions in key markets in which Thales Group operates. Our engineers design, develop and integrate solutions that impact global industries – from fully operational systems and subsystems for naval warfare and maritime security operations, to air traffic management systems, satellite-based solutions, tactical indoor simulations, identity and biometric technologies and more.