Senior Certification Manager

As Senior Project Certification Manager, you will lead the certification programme for Vertical Aerospace's eVTOL aircraft from early design through type certification. You will act as the key liaison between engineering, suppliers, and regulatory authorities globally, reporting to the Head of Airworthiness. Your role involves defining certification bases, managing compliance across all technical domains, and overseeing verification activities to achieve airliner-level safety certification by 2029.

Responsibilities

• Defining the certification basis and means of compliance, negotiating with civil aviation authorities
• Leading development of certification plans, test proposals, verification/validation (V&V) strategy, and inspection & qualification campaigns.
• Ensuring compliance in all technical domains (software, hardware, structural, systems, interiors, propulsion) with industry standards and regulations.
• Managing physical inspections, flight tests, environmental tests and other verification activities.
• Overseeing configuration management, design changes, and maintaining traceability of certification requirements.
• Leading and mentoring a team of certification, compliance, and technical specialists.
• Proactively identifying risks, resolving threats to schedule, and could-be obstacles to certification.
• Collaborating with suppliers to ensure their parts, processes and documentation satisfy certification requirements.
• Supporting continued airworthiness post-certification and managing modifications or changes.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in aircraft type certification or major modification/STC/major regulatory engagements in aerospace, preferably with highly regulated domains.
• Strong foundation in regulatory/airworthiness standards (e.g. equivalent to CS/FAR Part 23/25/27/29 or their global analogues), software & hardware compliance standards (DO-178C / DO-254), environmental qualification (DO-160 or equivalent), and systems safety & reliability (ARP4754A, ARP4761 or equivalents).
• Proven experience in interacting with aviation authorities internationally, negotiating technical requirements/methods of compliance, and delivering projects through audit or authority review.
• Leadership & management experience: building teams, mentoring engineers, managing cross-disciplinary stakeholder interfaces.
• Strong project planning, risk management, configuration control, and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication: able to translate complex technical/certification issues into program-level strategy and reports.
• Adaptability, bias for action, and able to thrive in fast-paced aerospace R&D / certification environment.

Benefits

• 26 days holiday, plus bank holiday
• 5 extra days per year to buy (or sell)
• 5 extra days holiday when you get married or enter a civil partnership
• Additional 4% of your salary to spend on extra benefits
• Award-winning digital health and wellbeing service (Help@Hand)
• Company performance based bonus - rewarding company and individual performance
• Company Share Scheme - open to every Vertical employee
• Company Pension Scheme - 5% and we match it
• Breakfast on us, every day