Job Title: First Line Manager Welder
Location: Plymouth Devon
Compensation: £33,900 - £48,800 Depending on Experience + Benefits
Role Type: Full time / Permanent
Role ID: SF74743
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 First Line Manager Welder at our Devonport Royal Dockyard site.
As a First Line Manager Welder, you’ll play a vital role within our Factory team, supporting critical submarine maintenance programmes, Continuous At Sea Deterrent operations and surface ship activities. This is an opportunity to combine your welding expertise, leadership skills and quality focus to help deliver some of the UK's most important defence engineering projects.
Day-to-day, you’ll support operational delivery, maintain welding standards and champion a right-first-time culture. You'll help develop workforce capability, drive continuous improvement and ensure welding activities are carried out safely, efficiently and to the highest quality standards.
- Managing welder qualifications, competency records and future qualification requirements across the team.
- Leading health and safety training compliance, quality assurance activities and right-first-time welding initiatives.
- Controlling welding equipment, consumables and welding documentation to ensure compliance and readiness.
- Conducting visual weld inspections and coordinating quality assurance, quality control and non-destructive testing inspections.
- Driving continuous improvement by analysing performance trends, improving traceability and supporting innovation projects.
This role is full time, 35 hours per week and is based on site at Devonport Royal Dockyard.
Essential experience of the First Line Manager Welder
- Experience working within an engineering, manufacturing or technical environment, ideally with at least five years' relevant experience.
- Strong knowledge of welding processes, including plate and pipe welding techniques.
- Sound understanding of factory manufacturing and production processes.
- Ability to communicate effectively with customers, senior stakeholders and operational teams.
- Experience using digital systems and engineering documentation within a production environment.
Qualifications for the First Line Manager Welder
- HNC, or equivalent qualification, in an Engineering or Technical discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
- Additional welding, quality assurance or manufacturing qualifications.
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
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: 17/07/2026
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