Job Description:

Leonardo is a global industrial group, among the main global players in Aerospace, Defence and Security that realises multi-domain technological capabilities in Helicopters, Aircraft, Aerostructures, Electronics, Cyber Security and Space. With over 60,000 employees worldwide, the company has a solid industrial presence in Italy, the UK, Poland and the US. It also operates in 150 countries through subsidiaries, joint ventures and investments. A key player in major international strategic programmes, it is a technological and industrial partner of governments, defence administrations, institutions and companies.

Within the GCAP Joint Venture, in the GCAP Technical Leadership UO, we are looking for a Digital Adoption & Capability Manager for GCAP HQ in Reading (UK).

The Digital Adoption & Capability Manager is responsible for the leadership across three key disciplines to maximise the value, resilience and effectiveness of the IT organisation:

• Workforce Planning – forecast and shape the IT skills, capacity and sourcing required to deliver the technology roadmap and run operations efficiently.

• Adoption & Change Management (A&CM) – drive measurable behaviour change and value realisation from IT-enabled transformations and evergreen services.

• Knowledge Management (KM) – define and govern how knowledge is captured, curated, shared and reused across IT and the business to improve service quality and speed.

This role ensures the right capabilities are in place at the right time, changes land successfully with our users and colleagues, and knowledge flows seamlessly across teams and platforms.

Key Capability Accountabilities and Objectives

IT Workforce Planning & Capability Management

• Own the IT workforce strategy, aligned to enterprise strategy, the IT operating model, and the product/platform roadmap. Looking at both short term and long-term needs for Edgewing along with supply of roles/capabilities from LSI’s and external suppliers

• Lead skills taxonomy and capability frameworks (e.g., SFIA) and maintain a heatmap of current vs. target skills for build/buy/borrow decisions.

• Run capacity planning across value streams and projects, helping balance the mix across permanent, contractor and partner sourcing.

• Partner with the IT Finance manager on headcount and contractor budgeting, forecasting, and scenario planning (e.g., demand surges, technology shifts, insourcing/outsourcing).

• Support the value streams to establish talent pipelines, academies, and reskilling pathways (e.g., cloud, data, security, DevOps) in partnership with HR/L&D and vendor programmes.

• Govern workforce metrics: utilisation, time‑to-fill, attrition, critical skills risk, bench/redeployment, and productivity.

Adoption & Change Management (A&CM)

• Define and embed an enterprise change methodology tailored for products and platforms

• Lead planning for technology initiatives: stakeholder analysis, change impact, communications, training, and benefits realisation.

• Stand up a business change network; drive executive sponsorship and change leadership capability across IT and business functions.

• Design training & enablement (role-based learning journeys, just‑in‑time micro‑learning, Digital champions).

• Embed A&CM into delivery lifecycle (e.g., gated portfolio, agile increments), ensuring adoption KPIs are defined and tracked in product backlogs.

• Coordinate go‑live readiness, hyper care, and feedback loops; capture lessons learned and feed into continuous improvement.

Knowledge Management (KM)

• Define the KM strategy for IT (Service, Project/Agile, Product, Cyber, Architecture), including governance, roles, and taxonomies, aligning to the needs of Edgewing and the framework it operates within.

• Support KCS-aligned practices for service knowledge; drive shift-left, self-service, and first‑time‑fix improvement.

• Integrate KM with collaboration and service platforms (e.g., M365, Azure DevOps ITSM/ESM tools) including metadata, search, and lifecycle rules.

• Govern content quality: ownership, review cadence, sunsetting, and knowledge-as-a-product principles.

• Promote a knowledge‑sharing culture (communities of practice, brown-bags, documentation standards) with reward/recognition mechanisms.

• Track KM health: search success, self‑solve %, deflection, article reuse, and knowledge freshness.

Leadership & Governance

• Lead a multidisciplinary team; recruit, coach and develop managers and specialists across Workforce, change and KM.

• Chair governance across workforce, change, and KM representing these functions in the IT Portfolio Board.

• Drive standardisation, automation and templates; maintain a playbook for workforce planning, change and knowledge practices.

• Manage vendor partnerships for training, content, and contingent workforce; ensure commercial value and SLA performance.

• Ensure compliance with policies (security, data protection, records management, accessibility).

Skills and Experience

Essential

·       Proven leadership in two or more of the following with exposure to the third: IT workforce/capability planning, change & adoption, knowledge management.

·       Experience operating in product/platform and/or service-oriented IT operating models (agile at scale desirable).

Practical delivery of enterprise rollouts (e.g., M365, ERP, CRM, data platforms,

·       security uplifts) with tracked adoption and benefits.

·       Designing/implementing skills frameworks (e.g., SFIA), talent pipelines, and reskilling programmes.

·       Implementing KCS or similar KM frameworks within ITSM; integrating KM with collaboration ecosystems.

Stakeholder management up to C‑suite; influencing in matrixed organisations and with external partners/SIs.

Desirable

·       Experience within a Defence industry environment.

·       Experience within an IT function that provides Engineering toolsets as the primary set of tools the business needs.

·       Experience of leading change adoption that includes users who are external to the company providing the IT systems.

·       Experience of working in a multi-cultural environment based around the globe.

Seniority:

Senior

Primary Location:

IT - Roma - Via Laurentina

Additional Locations:

IT - Catania, IT - Chieti Scalo, IT - Genova - Fiumara, IT - Milano - Nerviano, IT - Torino - C.so Marche

Contract Type:

Permanent

Hybrid Working:

Hybrid