We're building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.

We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.

Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 160 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe's fastest-growing engineering businesses.

The Role

We are already working with an exclusive search partner for this role and are not seeking additional recruitment agency support at this stage. We will not accept unsolicited agency approaches.

Rowden is looking for a VP Engineering to lead and strengthen the engineering discipline across the company as we scale into the next phase of growth.

This is a critical leadership role at an inflection point for the business. Rowden has grown rapidly into one of the fastest growing engineering companies in Europe, delivering mission-critical systems across defence and national resilience. We have a mature offering across complex technology programme delivery, specialist engineering services, and products and sub-systems.

The VP Engineering exists to ensure that scale does not dilute engineering quality, standards, culture or pace.

This role owns the engineering function as a discipline: the people, capabilities, standards, practices and technical calibration that underpin everything Rowden builds. You will not directly own engineering delivery; that responsibility sits within the business lines. Instead, you are responsible for ensuring the engineering organisation has the right people, operating at the right standard, with the right technical and leadership behaviours across the company.

You will lead an engineering team that works across FPGA, RF, embedded systems, distributed software, ML and applications engineering. The breadth is substantial, so we don’t expect you to be the deepest expert in every domain – it is about exercising strong technical judgement, recognising quality, building trust with technical leaders, and creating an engineering function that consistently performs at a high bar.

This role will suit someone who is technically credible, operationally grounded, comfortable making hard decisions, and motivated by building a high-performance engineering organisation in a demanding, mission-led environment.

For senior roles, compensation is tailored to the scope of the role and the specific experience a candidate brings. Because that can vary significantly, we do not always publish a fixed salary band. We will, however, discuss compensation openly at the first stage of the process and can share an indicative range before either side invests significant time.

Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.

More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels