Role: Beyond Earth Mission Manager 

Reporting to: Beyond Earth Mission Lead  

Direct reports: Not applicable 

Base: Harwell 

Would you like to be at the heart of developing innovative and transformative ideas? Are you interested in being part of a team that ensures space technology can address UK and global challenges? Do you want to be part of a Mission which will make a real difference? If so, you may be who we’re looking for!  

The Satellite Applications Catapult (Catapult) is at the forefront of the burgeoning UK Space Industry and focused on driving the sector’s commercial growth. Our work is organised around three missions – Autonomous and Connected Earth, Sustainable Earth and Beyond Earth – that concentrate our activities on the areas where we can deliver greatest impact.  We help businesses realise their potential, those developing and providing space infrastructure, and those developing applications that rely on it.

The Catapult has a twin role, operating as a neutral convener bringing projects, programmes and commercial opportunities to companies in the space sector and bringing space companies and capabilities to the attention of funders and commercial partners. We also use our expertise to deliver key programmes where we see a clear role for us to play.  

The primary purpose of the Beyond Earth mission is to drive the growth of the UK space sector by leveraging opportunities arising from the in-space economy. The goal of the mission is to support the UK to become a leading player in the global in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM) market by 2035 by being an integral provider of in-space logistics, servicing, and manufacturing technology and capability.

Reporting into the Beyond Earth Mission Lead, you will manage a portfolio of activities that collectively deliver on a key objective of the mission (an intervention). The Beyond Earth mission will have two interventions: In-Space Logistics & Services and In-Space Manufacturing and R&D. This is a highly networked role that requires an ability to work under pressure, to challenging deadlines in an organised and collaborative way.

Using your depth of knowledge and experience in a key mission area, such as robotics, satellite servicing, and microgravity manufacturing, you will bring impact and insight into the mission team that enables an intervention. You will lead on an intervention, overseeing strategy, direction and impact, engaging relevant stakeholders and the wider ecosystem, supporting growth and pipeline development, translating ideas into delivery and ensuring continuous learning and improvement. You will demonstrate accountability, strong stakeholder management, strategic capability, programmatic approach, clear subject matter expertise, positive core values, professional behaviour and ability to bring people and ideas together through influence rather than direct management. 

As the Mission Manager, you will…. 

• Design and adapt – You will set the strategy for your intervention and ensure that it supports the mission goal and purpose. You will continuously evolve the intervention strategy based on market developments.

• Capture – Working closely with technical and sales teams, you will drive opportunity capture for your intervention and translation from idea to pipeline for delivery. You will be accountable for aligning opportunities with the intervention and mission strategies and identifying sources of funding.

• Collaborate – You will demonstrate by example that the best solutions come from a diverse group of thinkers, within our organisation, and beyond it.   You will build and manage your network of relevant stakeholders that are key to the intervention.

• Coordinate – You will ensure that the SAC team is more than the sum of its parts. You will support and draw on every function of the Catapult, to achieve best possible impact. 

• Deliver –You will lead the intervention (including projects and services that comprise it), ensuring realisation of outputs and outcomes towards the  mission goals and objectives - ensuring that the team is more than the sum of its parts. You will act as escalation point for projects and services in delivery under the intervention. 

• Developing the mission team – you will be part of a close and supportive mission team, you will share your expertise to enable others, and learn yourself as new situations arise. You will work with functional leads, the line managers of your people, to ensure that they continue to learn and grow, supporting their development through your mission and providing insight into their performance.  

• Ensure compliance – You will work within the governance processes and respect our ways of working. With a continuous improvement lens, if those processes are not working as intended you will feedback and be involved in providing solutions that work for all. 

• Ensure financially sustainable impact  – You will ensure you have routes to fund your work and stay within their limits.  You will define the budget required for internal work under your intervention and will be responsible for your allocated innovation budget expenditure and forecast.  

• Fore sighting -  You will seek to understand the opportunities on the horizon and work with the wider team to continually review and revise the intervention strategy. 

• Scale – You will look for ways to grow the overall mission impact as well as your intervention, working closely with the business development team and technical experts to reveal the opportunities beyond the obvious 

• Report – You will provide reporting against the Grant Work Programme (GWP) and the wider Catapult annual workplan. 

We expect that you would have the following skills and experience… 

• Extensive experience of strategic planning and workstream delivery 

• Strong stakeholder management and demonstrable success of delivering through others 

• Commercial and analytical mindset, with the ability to support the development of key commercial opportunities that deliver on the Catapult’s purpose and your mission 

• A depth of knowledge in one or more key enabling areas for the Beyond Earth mission  - in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing, microgravity research 

• Experience in creating high performing, cross-departmental, multi-disciplinary teams without ‘authority’  but with involvement 

• Building effective partnerships, with the ability to engage and inspire, in your own style, both internal and external stakeholders 

• Experience or ability to push conventional boundaries to create greater impact 

• Expert influencer with ability to rapidly change and adapt as needed 

• Aspirational thinker but pragmatic when needed 

You know you have been successful when… 

You are part of a mission capturing the key growth opportunities and impacts from a space sector perspective, and your work, which is delivering and adapting as required, is highly aligned to the objectives of the organisation. 

How we work….

About us & how we work: 

We strive to create a high trust, high performance, and inclusive environment that enables team members to bring their whole selves to work – this helps to create the foundations of an innovation culture. Our shared values are critical to this: 

• We care - for our people, our partners, and our planet. 

• We connect - and engage with people and ideas. 

• We learn - and grow, as people and as an industry. 

Underpinning this is our belief in great teams; our combined efforts will always deliver outcomes beyond that of any individual, providing we are honest through debate, experiment and reflect, and create shared resolutions in support of our purpose. Live these values, work to our principles, take ownership to deliver, and we are certain you will thrive with us. 

This job description set outs the skills and experience we think are needed to be able to perform in this job. However, if you believe you can deliver in this role then we want to hear from you.

Important notice for applicants: We use tools to detect plagiarism and the use of AI or chatbots for applicant answers. If plagiarism, AI use (such as ChatGPT) or similar software are found to have been used in your application you will not be considered for this or future roles within the Satellite Applications Catapult.

At Satellite Applications Catapult, we're committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workforce. We welcome candidates from all corners of the globe, but due to legal and logistical considerations, we want to be transparent about the potential visa-related challenges that could arise. Our ability to offer sponsorship will depend on the level of interest for our roles and salary level.

If you need any additional support during the application process, please do reach out and connect. We also invite you to share feedback via Applied.