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Destinus is a vertically integrated European defence manufacturer developing autonomous drones, strike effectors and air-defence systems for European and allied forces. With 800+ engineers across the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, France, Ukraine and the UK, the company operates at industrial tempo to serve customers who cannot afford delays.
As Program Contract Manager, you will own the contract baseline across the programme lifecycle, acting as the connective tissue between the Programme Manager, customer and internal functions. This is a delivery-focused role, not a legal one, centred on programme execution across the defence portfolio.
Key responsibilities include:
- Owning contract baseline for one or more defence programmes: scope, deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria and dependencies, keeping it current as programmes evolve
- Acting as workstream lead within the Programme Management team, reporting to the Programme Manager, and translating contractual obligations into executable work packages with clear owners and dates
- Supporting the Programme Manager in customer interface on contract delivery, including status, milestone evidence, acceptance and formal reporting
- Leading commercial negotiations with customers in bid, offering and change-request processes, securing agreed terms on scope, price, schedule and risk in coordination with Commercial, Finance and Legal
- Aligning Finance, Commercial, Supply Chain, Production and Engineering around a single shared view of contractual commitments, payment milestones and delivery risk
- Triggering change management by identifying scope variations early and generating impact analysis on cost, schedule and delivery
- Maintaining milestone and payment tracking with Finance, ensuring invoicing triggers are evidenced and timely
- Tracking obligations and flagging risks before they become issues—delivery slippage, unmet dependencies, contractual exposure—and driving them to closure
- Supporting programme and contract reporting for internal leadership and customer governance forums
- Building working routines, templates and cadence to enable contract delivery to scale as the programme portfolio grows
Requirements:
- Degree in engineering or comparable technical discipline; specialisation or postgraduate focus in project or programme management is a strong plus
- 2–5 years of experience in project, programme or contract delivery roles, ideally in defence, aerospace or other complex hardware/systems environments
- Proven stakeholder management; genuinely good with people and able to hold a room containing customers, finance leads and production managers with competing priorities
- Ability to read a contract and translate it into a delivery plan; comfortable with milestones, deliverables, acceptance criteria and payment terms
- Structured, organised and reliable under pressure; you keep the single source of truth and people trust it
- Strong written and spoken English
- Willingness to work on-site and travel to customer and production locations as programmes require
Nice to have:
- Working knowledge of Dutch, German or Spanish
- Exposure to government or military customers and defence procurement processes
- Familiarity with earned value management, milestone-based contracting or ITAR/EAR and European export-control frameworks
- Experience introducing structure into a fast-growing organisation
