Job Title: Welding First Line Manager
Location: Plymouth, Devon
Compensation: £33,900 - £42,400 Depending on Experience + Benefits
Role Type: Full time / Permanent
Role ID: SF73751
Lead skilled trades that keep the Royal Navy operational
At Babcock we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together, and if you join us, you can play your part as a Welding First Line Manager at our Devonport Royal Dockyard site.
The role
As a Welding First Line Manager, you’ll take responsibility for leading and coordinating welding activity within the Warships Production Hub. You’ll manage skilled welding teams working across multiple vessels, ensuring work is delivered safely, efficiently and to the highest quality standards.
Day-to-day, you’ll balance productivity, safety and quality while supporting the development of your team, contributing technical input to schedules and ensuring welding work aligns with project priorities. The role offers exposure to large‑scale naval refit programmes and the opportunity to build a strong leadership career within a highly respected engineering environment.
- Leading and supervising welding teams, allocating labour to meet cost, time and quality targets
- Coordinating welding activity across multiple vessels, prioritising resources to meet delivery milestones
- Ensuring welding work complies with quality management systems, procedures and safety standards
- Monitoring productivity and progress, reporting rework, additional tasks and team performance
- Supporting team development, ensuring appropriate welding qualifications and training are in place
This role is full time, 35 hours per week and is based on site at Devonport Royal Dockyard.
Essential experience of the Welding First Line Manager
- Strong experience in welding or fabrication environments, including hot work activities
- Proven supervisory or first‑line management experience within a trade setting
- Ability to manage labour across multiple work areas or platforms
- Good communication skills, both verbal and written
- Confidence using IT systems to record labour, progress and performance data
Qualifications for the Welding First Line Manager
- Level 3 NVQ in Welding, Fabrication, or a completed welding‑based apprenticeship (or equivalent experience)
Security Clearance
The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Security Check (SC) security clearance for this role.
Many of the positions within our company are subject to national security clearance and Trade Control restrictions. This means that your eligibility for certain roles may be affected by your place of birth, nationality, current or former citizenship, and any residency you hold or have held. Further details are available at United Kingdom Security Vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
What we offer
- Generous holiday allowance
- Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance
- Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+
- Employee shopping savings portal
- Payment of Professional Fees
- Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave
- Holiday Trading is a benefit that allows UK Babcock employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement. This Window opens February through to March annually.
- ‘Be Kind Day’ enables employees to take one working day's paid leave a year (or equivalent hours) to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity
Babcock
We’re Babcock — a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 26,000 people working together to make a difference.
Here, you’ll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we’re building a future that lasts — not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance.
We call that lifetime engineering.
Join us and see how far we can go, together.
We are a disability confident committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email careers@babcockinternational.com with the subject header ‘Reasonable adjustments requirement’. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone’s free to thrive. We are happy to talk about flexible working – please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.
Closing date: dd/mm/yyyy
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