Engineering Apprentice Manager

As the nation’s flag carrier, we take great pride in connecting Britain with the world and the world with Britain.

It’s something we’ve been doing for over 100 years, ever since we launched the world’s first international scheduled air service between London and Paris.

Since then, British Airways has gone on to deliver game-changing achievements. First we broke the record for the fastest transatlantic flight with Concorde. Then we became the very first airline to introduce fully lie-flat seats on board.

It was our exceptional engineering teams that brought these pioneering and original ideas to life.

This is your chance to join one of the most diverse and innovative departments at British Airways, at a time when we’re re-imagining the way we fly the skies.

The role:

Engineering Apprentice Manager

A unique strategic leadership role at the heart of our engineering talent pipeline. As the Engineering Apprentice Manager, you’ll lead a team responsible for setting the direction for how we attract, develop, and inspire our future engineers.

Working in a complex, safety critical environment, you’ll balance people leadership with strategic planning and operational delivery, ensuring a high quality apprentice experience that embeds health, safety, wellbeing, and professional standards. You’ll influence the long‑term apprentice and talent pipeline strategy, drive consistency and quality across programmes and collaborate with senior leaders, safety teams and training partners to develop confident, capable engineers for the future.

What you’ll do:

• Accountable for the technical, quality and airmanship standards of all engineering apprenticeship programmes in delivering against future resource requirements, making recommendations through clear, actionable areas for improvement.
• Act as the central point of contact for apprentices, business stakeholders and external providers, resolving issues where appropriate.
• Responsible for ensuring a safe working environment with professional standards for apprentice placements across the UK and overseas supported by a strong mentor network.
• Drives engagement and builds effective relationships with trade unions, colleagues, senior stakeholders up to Director level and partners by role modelling and embedding leadership and brand behaviours.
• Understands colleague performance, setting and managing to clear expectations.
• Develop apprenticeship skills, capabilities and qualifications to support learning objectives and business requirements in order to successfully transition into permanent roles.
• Leads induction activities, sourcing and allocation of placements, development interventions, community forums and apprentice exchange programmes.
• Bring cohesion and consistency across Engineering for all apprenticeship programmes to build a strong, networked and interdependent apprentice community.
• Responsible for the development of mentors and consistent development of the support network and safeguarding of work experience students and apprentices through communication and training.

What you’ll bring to British Airways:

• Evidence of leading people, consistently delivering and developing high performance teams
• Use of proven communication skills, engaging and influencing to deliver business objectives
• Coached and identified development areas for self and others
• Ability to develop, inspire and guide teams to deliver to their full potential
• Demonstrates structured problem-solving skills to make fact-based decisions in a complex environment.
• Good technical knowledge to challenge the status quo, implement new ideas
• Self-aware and emotionally intelligent
• Understands own development needs and when to ask for help
• Ability to adapt leadership style to different situations
• Uncompromising in safety, security, process and regulatory requirements
• Drives the internal business stakeholders and the Global Learning Academy to plan and deliver successful apprenticeship programmes that meet business objectives,
• Enables, empowers and embeds continuous improvement that delivers value added change
• Passionate about the development of the future talent pipeline, developing the outreach strategies and work experience programmes, growing diversity and attracting new talent into engineering.

Your experience:

• Detailed knowledge of aircraft engineering principles and airmanship (Essential)
• HNC/D in Engineering, Aircraft Maintenance Licence or suitable experience (Essential)
• Working knowledge of CAA Regulations, BA policies, procedures and technical documentation (Preferred)
• Working knowledge of Health and Safety legislation (Preferred)
• Working knowledge of apprenticeships (Preferred)

What we offer:

As an airline, we never want to stand still. The same goes for our people. 

We’re committed to upskilling our engineers and providing professional development training so you can progress in your area of expertise. That way, you’ll attain the highest levels of professional achievement as we continue to invest in new technology, equipment, and aircraft.

Training modules are offered through self-study courses, or structured learning programmes, and delivered at our state-of-the-art Learning Academy at London Heathrow.

When you work in an engineering role at British Airways, you’ll be joining a high-performance culture. It’s a time-pressured environment too, but the challenges here are exciting and diverse, and you’ll be part of projects you won’t find anywhere else. That’s what keeps our exceptional colleagues inspired to do their best work. We also offer fantastic rewards, including great staff travel benefits.

Inclusion & Diversity

At British Airways we all have a part to play in creating an inclusive place to work. Diverse representation among our people is really important to us and we recognise that all our colleagues are uniquely different and bring their own originality, creativity and identity to work.

Inclusion and diversity is a key driver of innovation and we’re committed to creating a culture where everyone feels that they can be themselves. We’re looking for people from all backgrounds and cultures to join us and be a part of our journey to become a Better BA as we continue to connect Britain with the world and the world with Britain.