Group Leader

Fantastic challenges. Amazing opportunities.

GKN Aerospace is reimagining air travel: going further, faster and greener! Fuelled by great people whose expertise and creativity sets the standards in our industry, we’re inspired by the opportunities to innovate and break boundaries. We’re proud to play a part in protecting the world’s democracies. And we’re committed to putting sustainability at the centre of everything we do, opening up and protecting our planet. With over 16,000 employees across 32 manufacturing sites in 12 countries we serve over 90% of the world’s aircraft and engine manufacturers and achieved sales of £3.6bn in 2025. There are no limits to where you can take your career.

Job Summary

Lead a manufacturing group consisting of multiple teams, production areas, or related operations to safely deliver conforming aerospace products on time and at the required quality, cost, productivity, and customer-service levels.

Translate the Organization’s priorities into disciplined daily and weekly execution through Team Leaders. Establish consistent operating standards, strengthen accountability, remove cross-team barriers, develop frontline leadership capability, and ensure effective escalation and resolution of issues affecting safety, quality, delivery, cost, people, and capacity.

Serve as the second-line manufacturing leader connecting Team Leaders responsible for shop-floor execution with the Operations Leader responsible for broader operational performance, capability, and direction.

Job Responsibilities

1. Safety, Environmental and Workplace Control

- Lead with a safety-first mindset across assigned teams and production areas; ensure Team Leaders establish clear expectations for hazards, controls, personal protective equipment, and safe work practices.

- Maintain routine floor presence, review safety observations and leading indicators, and ensure prompt escalation and correction of injuries, near misses, environmental concerns, and unsafe conditions.

- Hold Team Leaders accountable for compliance with lockout/tagout, machine guarding, material handling, housekeeping, chemical, ergonomic, emergency, and other applicable requirements.

- Stop or redirect work when conditions could compromise employee safety, product integrity, equipment, or the environment; coordinate resolution of risks that span multiple teams or functions.

2. Manufacturing Execution: Safety, Quality, Delivery and Cost

- Own manufacturing performance across assigned teams, shifts, product families, or production areas and translate production requirements into executable near-term priorities.

- Review safety, quality, delivery, cost, productivity, labor, attendance, work-in-process, scrap, rework, downtime, and constraint performance; establish clear owners and recovery actions when results deviate from plan.

- Balance staffing, skills, equipment, and workflow between teams as operating conditions change while maintaining appropriate controls and escalation.

- Ensure Team Leaders have the work instructions, specifications, tooling, materials, training, and support required for consistent execution.

3. Daily Management and Operating Discipline

- Lead the daily management process for the assigned group through Leader Standard Work, tiered communication, visible metrics, routine floor reviews, and disciplined action follow-up.

- Establish consistent shift-to-shift and team-to-team communication, escalation, and decision-making expectations.

- Ensure abnormalities are contained, barriers are assigned to accountable owners, and corrective actions are verified for effectiveness.

- Prevent recurring problems from becoming accepted operating conditions by ensuring standards are documented, communicated, trained, audited, and sustained.

(cont...)

4. Quality and Product Integrity

- Reinforce the expectation that Manufacturing owns quality at the point of execution while respecting independent Quality authority.

- Ensure Team Leaders consistently enforce approved work instructions, specifications, process controls, documentation, traceability, and configuration requirements.

- Coordinate rapid containment of product or process abnormalities and partner with Quality and Engineering on root-cause analysis and corrective action.

- Drive reductions in scrap, rework, repeat defects, escapes, and cost of poor quality without allowing production pressure to override required controls.

5. Constraint Removal and Cross-Functional Execution

- Act as the principal operating integrator for issues that cannot be resolved within a single Team Leader's span of control.

- Coordinate with Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, Planning, Maintenance, Supply Chain, EH&S, Human Resources, Finance, and Continuous Improvement to resolve material, tooling, equipment, labor, quality, engineering, scheduling, and process constraints.

- Prioritize competing requirements based on safety, quality, customer need, production risk, and business impact; maintain accountability until significant constraints are resolved.

- Escalate issues requiring director-level decisions with clear facts, operational impact, options, and a recommended course of action.

6. Team Leader Leadership, Engagement and Development

- Lead, coach, evaluate, and develop Team Leaders; establish clear leadership expectations and consistent operating standards across teams and shifts.

- Conduct routine one-on-one coaching and performance discussions, observe Team Leaders in real operating conditions, and provide timely, candid feedback.

- Strengthen Team Leader capability in safety leadership, employee engagement, performance management, daily management, structured problem solving, and escalation.

- Identify leadership capability gaps, establish development and succession actions, and hold Team Leaders accountable for developing their employees.

- Create and sustain a culture aligned with Great Place to Grow values through visible leadership, respectful communication, recognition, consistency, and follow-through.

(cont...)

7. Continuous Improvement and Structured Problem Solving

- Build structured problem solving into routine operations and lead resolution of recurring issues involving multiple teams or functions.

- Use practical Lean methods, root-cause analysis, visual management, standard work, and appropriate analytical tools to reduce waste and improve flow.

- Eliminate recurring queue, rework, waiting, handoff, and variation-related losses while protecting safety, quality, configuration control, and customer requirements.

- Ensure improvements are incorporated into standard work and sustained; develop Team Leaders to solve problems effectively at their level.

8. Workforce, Capacity and Compliance Management

- Assess labor and skill requirements against production demand; coordinate staffing, cross-training, and skill deployment across assigned teams.

- Identify capacity risks, single-point dependencies, and resource gaps; support recovery, overtime, shift, staffing, and resource recommendations based on operating requirements.

- Partner with Human Resources on attendance, conduct, performance, labor-relations, employee-development, and organizational matters in accordance with company practices.

- Comply with applicable Equal Employment Opportunity, Affirmative Action, Export Control, labor, security, quality, environmental, health, and safety requirements; perform other duties consistent with the role and business needs.

Required Qualifications

- High school diploma or GED equivalent.

- Seven years of progressive experience in a regulatory environment such as automotive, aerospace or medical products.

- Three years of manufacturing supervisory or leadership experience, including responsibility for frontline leaders or multiple production teams.

- Demonstrated ability to manage safety, quality, delivery, cost, productivity, and workforce performance in a regulated manufacturing environment.

- Experience with daily management, performance metrics, structured problem solving, corrective-action follow-through, and cross-functional issue resolution.

- Strong communication, coaching, prioritization, problem-solving, and leadership skills.

- Ability to use business and manufacturing systems for performance tracking, analysis, documentation, and follow-up.

- Ability to work on-site in an active manufacturing environment and support the schedule required by the assigned operation.

- Must satisfy all position-specific employment eligibility, export-control, site-access, and security requirements applicable to the work performed, including ITAR/EAR requirements.

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Preferred Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Operations, Manufacturing, Business, Management, or a related field.

- Experience leading in a unionized manufacturing environment.

- Experience managing multiple production teams, shifts, production areas, or value streams.

- Demonstrated experience coaching and developing frontline leaders and succession candidates.

- Experience with Lean manufacturing, daily management, Leader Standard Work, visual management, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement.

- Experience supporting capacity improvement, production recovery, or manufacturing transformation.

We’ll offer you fantastic challenges and amazing opportunities. This is your chance to be part of an organisation that has proven itself to be at the cutting edge of our industry; and is committed to pushing the boundaries even further. And with some of the best training on offer in the industry, who knows how far you can go?

A Great Place to work needs a Great Way of Working

Everyone is welcome to apply to GKN. We believe that we can only achieve our ambitions through a coming together of diverse minds who enjoy collaborating in an inspirational environment. Through our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging and by living our five powerful principles we’ve created a culture where everyone feels welcome to contribute. It’s a culture that won us ‘The Best Workplace Culture Award’. By embracing and celebrating what makes us unique we encourage everyone to bring their full self to work.

We’re also committed to providing an accessible recruitment process, so if you require reasonable adjustments at any stage during our recruitment process please get in touch and let us know.

We are the place where human dreams, plus human endeavour, shape the future of aerospace innovation and technology. ​
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