Head of Systems & Project Engineering

About Watsmen

Watsmen is building an engineering-led industrial group. We connect technical capability, disciplined execution and practical commercial judgement to deliver valuable industrial solutions.

Role Purpose

Build Watsmen’s systems and project-engineering capability, turning industrial opportunities into coherent, testable engineering scopes. Connect customer needs, discipline designs and execution through controlled requirements, interfaces and evidence. Develop reusable methods while keeping capability claims proportionate to demonstrated competence and available delivery capacity.

Key Accountabilities

• Establish a proportionate engineering lifecycle for opportunity screening, definition, design, verification and handover. Deliver a controlled framework identifying required inputs, accountable owners, review points and evidence needed before each technical acceptance decision.
• Own systems integration across discipline boundaries. Produce an integrated requirements baseline, architecture and interface register that show assumptions, design dependencies, acceptance criteria and unresolved decisions, with named owners and escalation dates.
• Direct engineering planning with project and discipline leads. Maintain resource-loaded deliverable plans, competency requirements and partner coverage; distinguish available capability from capability still being developed or procured before commitments are proposed.
• Make engineering risk and change visible. Provide consolidated change-impact assessments and decision records covering safety, performance, cost, schedule and verification, routing material departures to the appropriately appointed technical authority.
• Prepare evidence-led technical reviews and delivery readiness assessments. Maintain review packs, action closure records and handover requirements; raise gaps promptly rather than allow commercial urgency to substitute for engineering acceptance.
• Build repeatable engineering practice and institutional learning. Deliver usable templates, lessons from completed work and a prioritised capability-development roadmap, with version ownership and evidence that methods improve real project decisions.
• Maintain delivery-capacity commitments and standard engineering scopes for selected offers; confirm bid-to-delivery readiness with Commercial and the COO before accepting execution expectations.

First 90 Days

• By day 30: Map the initial engineering workload, decision rights and competence gaps; agree an interim integration approach and publish the first prioritised interface and technical-risk register.
• By day 60: Apply a lightweight lifecycle and requirements baseline to an agreed pilot scope; establish deliverable ownership, review evidence and explicitly bounded competent-partner coverage.
• By day 90: Demonstrate an integrated review of the pilot with traceable decisions and acceptance evidence; present lessons, remaining risks and a resourced next-quarter capability roadmap. Demonstrate agreed offer scopes and capacity commitments, with readiness evidence and a review of avoidable rework.

Essential Requirements

• Relevant engineering degree or equivalent demonstrable technical formation, with evidence of multidisciplinary industrial delivery.
• Demonstrated systems thinking: requirements decomposition, interface management, configuration control and verification planning across interacting engineering disciplines.
• Evidence of leading engineering teams or partners through uncertainty, documenting trade-offs and escalating decisions outside their competence or authority.
• Ability to communicate technical implications clearly to commercial and executive colleagues without overstating readiness, safety or performance.
• Professional registration where the actual assigned scope and applicable jurisdiction require it; willingness to work within documented competence and appointment limits.

Desirable Experience

• Experience establishing practical engineering governance in an early-stage or growing organisation.
• Experience integrating supplier, construction, commissioning and operating evidence into engineering decisions.

Authority And Decision Boundaries

• Coordinate shared engineering methods, integration priorities and delegated resources; scope, staffing and expenditure remain subject to approved delegations.
• The title grants no signing or design-acceptance authority. Engineering competence, technical claims and acceptance require separately appointed authority, independent of commercial pressure.
• Escalate unsafe, unsupported or out-of-scope work and require documented resolution before recommending progression.

Key Interfaces

Discipline Engineering Leads and appointed technical authorities; Project Engineering Manager and Systems & Requirements Engineer; Commercial, Contracts and Trade teams; Anchor leaders, project companies and competent delivery partners.

Commercial and COO on offer capacity, standard scopes and bid-to-delivery readiness.

How Success Is Evidenced

• Completeness and usability of requirements, interfaces and review evidence.
• Timely closure of engineering decisions and material cross-discipline risks.
• Delivery predictability, avoidable rework and accuracy of capability claims.
• Delivery predictability, accepted reuse and reduction of avoidable rework.

Activation And Delivery Readiness

Assigned work requires confirmed resources, competent delivery capacity and the applicable approvals. The role operates within its documented delegation; appointment alone does not confer contracting, spending, technical-approval or system-access authority.

Location And Travel

Istanbul, Türkiye. Project, partner and Anchor visits where required for integration and review; destinations and frequency will be discussed before appointment.

Employment And Working Arrangements

Full-time employment, with annual performance reviews. Twelve-month renewable contracts where legally appropriate, with probation and renewal terms determined under local law.

Roles are on-site by default. Hybrid or remote working requires prior approval. No relocation assistance or visa support is provided.

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