Lead Software Engineer

Saab
Fareham, United Kingdom
Last month
Posted
6 Apr 2026 (Last month)

Introduction

Saab UK is part of Scandinavia's largest defence company, bringing together the best of Swedish and British innovation. Saab offers world-leading solutions and services in defence, aviation, space, and civil security to keep people and society safe. Our UK presence has been growing at pace, meaning we can offer a wide range of opportunities for personal fulfilment and career growth. We currently employ over 600 people across eight sites in the UK, and our specialisations include software engineering, underwater robotics, radars, AI, and armed forces training.

The Role:

To design and implement software solutions for underwater robotics applications in line with the company's business needs through innovation, creativity and professionalism.

Able to demonstrate expertise and experience in software used on industrial/vehicle/vessel systems.

Reporting to the Software Manager the Software Lead role involves taking responsibility for the delivery of projects and leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver technically complex software projects for subsea vehicles and associated robotic functions. Typically requiring input from several differing software and engineering disciplines and supporting functions the software lead is able to bind these inputs together to successfully deliver the software content for Saab products.

Qualifications and Skills:

Required skills:

A minimum of 7 years' experience as a Senior Engineer.

A Degree in a relevant Engineering Discipline.

Broad understanding of software from embedded though to applications

Leading multi-disciplined teams of software engineers

Able to develop a software architecture for complex systems from scratch

Sound understanding of modern software methods and technologies

Able to maintain a system level approach and not get lost in the detail

Able to develop system level requirements and derive lower level requirements to achieve these

Sound understanding of safety concepts and design

Able to interface directly with customers

Able to act as a technical authority

Able to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders

Able to estimate work content and duration

Able to plan work loading for teams ensuring no team member is overloaded

Able to develop and instigate processes to ensure industry best practice is achieved

Able to ensure appropriate levels of Software Quality are achieved for projects

Able to mentor and develop junior engineers

Ability to delegate tasks

Able to manage resources and budgets

Practical understanding of standards and application of standards

Appreciation of Cyber Security and the impacts on design

In addition, you will be Able to demonstrate software skills in some of the following technologies on both Windows and Linux:

C++

Javascript

Python

XML

JSON

HTML

CSS

Web backend servers (Angular, Django, NodeJS, React, Apache or similar)

Web Sockets

Docker

TCP-IP / UDP

SQL or other databases

Dev tools (Wireshark, system log interrogation etc..)

Databases

Cyber Security

Desirable:

Exposure to IP video and video routing

Familiarity in design and testing of control software

Familiarity with Systems serving Real Time Information via Web Sockets

Use of DDS and interfacing with it

Message Queues (Active MQ/Rabbit MQ/ZeroMQ)

GUI Development experience (.Net GUI framework, Qt 6.2 or previous versions)

Developing and debugging software for application software in Visual studio (2013, 2017, 2022)

Customer facing API's using web technologies

By submitting an application to Saab UK you consent to undertaking workforce screening activities that may include but are not limited to: Baseline Personnel Security checks, National Security Vetting, reference checks, verification of working rights and in all circumstances preferred candidates will be placed through a security interview

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