Maritime Engineering Manager (Shore-based)

Location: Gosport, Hampshire.

Contract: Full Time, permanent

Salary: Competitive

Closing Date: 11 January 2026

Are you an experienced Engineer looking for a new opportunity?

The Marine Society & Sea Cadets (MSSC) is a vibrant and growing charity delivering life changing nautical adventure for young people through the Sea Cadets to give them the best possible head start in life. We also provide personal and professional development opportunities for seafarers with the Marine Society. Working with our staff, cadets, and volunteers, we have built a vision and five-year strategy to take us forward and further improve the astounding contribution already made through our work to the lives of thousands of young people and seafarers, while fully supporting our volunteers who are vital to our success.

We are currently looking for an experienced maritime engineering manager to join our team.

About the role

The shore-based Maritime Engineering Manager will play a key role in sustaining the MSSC’s offshore vessels which provide sea-going experiences for cadets (aged 12-18) and in ensuring the safety of all personnel on board. The main purpose of the role is to provide support to the vessels’ engineer officers with the engineering management and maintenance needs of MSSC’s offshore vessels.

Responsibilities

• Providing day-to-day support in identifying defects and safety shortcomings, determining solutions, assisting in rectification or organising cost effective professional repairs at advantageous prices and obtaining replacement parts.
• Producing, overseeing and tracking (technically and financially) the winter maintenance work packages for the fleet.
• Progressive development of MSSC’s Safety Management System & Electronic Planned Maintenance System, related to the technical running and management of each offshore vessel.
• Assisting the engineer officers of MSSC’s vessels with maintenance tasks.
• Managing records to support and evidence MSSC’s maintenance programme.
• Acting as an occasional sea-going relief engineer on board any of the three larger vessels.

Requirements

About you

At MSSC Offshore we value attitude, experience and skills, no matter what route you have taken to build your portfolio. The following examples illustrate the type of person we are looking for, but are not exclusive. So long as you can show an equivalent level of experience and skills, and a willingness to learn more, we absolutely want to hear from you. For full descriptions, please see the Person Specification in the Recruitment Pack.

Personal Attributes

• High reliability in personal and professional standards, particularly in timekeeping, workload management and engineering standards.
• Confident working with a broad range of people; from briefing VIPs or educating cadets, through to assisting engineers with hands-on maintenance.
• Flexible and resilient, adaptable to change.
• Satisfactory DBS check or equivalent (arranged by MSSC if not already held).
• Ability and willingness to work at sea aboard MSSC vessels both during maintenance prior to the training season and as a relief engineer officer during the sailing season.
• Health and fitness necessary to obtain ENG1 / ML5 medical certification.

Core Skills

• Ability to communicate complex technical information clearly and accurately, to both technical and non-technical audiences, in writing and verbally.
• Self-awareness that supports ability to build professional relationships with people from all walks of life.
• Experience of prioritising competing work demands and ability to make independent assessments of priority tasks without supervision.
• Track record of developing and managing safe systems of work, including implementing a Just Culture of safety and environmental compliance in the workplace.

Qualifications and Experience

• Engineer with appropriate experience and qualifications for operation up to Area Category 0 under the Small Commercial Vessel Code.
• Suitable examples include: MCA AEC2; Small Vessel Chief Engineer < 500GT & <3,000kW; RN MEOOW plus ICE AdQual; Engineer Officer Certificate of Competency (Fishing Vessel) Class 1 or 2.
• Other equivalent qualifications will be considered.
• Experience in both seagoing and shore support roles in the maritime sector.  Areas of experience should include safety, equipment operation, maintenance, refit planning and execution.
• Experience using IT including third-party electronic planned maintenance management systems to support maintenance planning.
• Fluency with Office 365 core applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint).
• Evidence of effective liaison and strong working relationships with third parties, such as ship and shore staff, external authorities, suppliers and contractors.

Desirable Attributes

• Power and sail background ideally across a variety of vessels including FRP construction and GT <300 tonnes
• Experience with maintaining vessels in Lloyd’s or other recognised Classification Society Rules and Flag State Code of Practice.
• Knowledge of typical small commercial or recreational vessel machinery, control, navigation and communications systems and their integration.
• Experience of working with young people and a proven track record of strong interpersonal skills and management of teams, ideally whilst at reach.

If you are interested in the Maritime Engineering Manager role, please apply now!

Benefits

• 25 working days pro rata of paid holiday per annum, plus public and bank holidays observed in England and Wales, increasing to 29 days after two years’ service.
• Life assurance (4x salary) for those who opt to join the pension scheme.
• Private medical insurance.
• Pension (employer contribution up to 10%).
• Wellbeing portal and EAP with 121 counselling.
• Employee development: We are investing in our employees' development and have an annual calendar of learning and development opportunities, designed to support employees to develop into their roles and stretch them to achieve their full potential.
• National staff conference: All employees come together once a year to reflect on the past year and celebrate success at our offsite staff conference. This is a great opportunity to listen to employees' views, and for employees to network, share information and socialise.

Additional Information

MSSC positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates from all backgrounds. Equity, diversity and inclusion really matter to us, so we can best serve our beneficiaries from every community. We work to ensure a fair and consistent recruitment process and aim to be a charity where diversity of experience, identity and skills are valued and welcomed. We believe diverse minds make stronger teams. If you think differently, process information in unique ways, or have specific needs, we want to hear from you. We’re happy to adjust our recruitment process to help you show your best. MSSC is an equal opportunities employer.

We recognise our responsibilities to safeguard and protect the young people and vulnerable adults with whom we work. We do all we can to promote their health, safety and wellbeing, and we expect our staff to share this commitment and work in line with safeguarding policy, the MSSC’s values and ethos of inclusivity. We adhere to safer recruitment practices and therefore employment is subject to detailed pre-employment checks for successful candidates, including references and criminal disclosure checks and the completion of a disclosure questionnaire. 

All successful applicants are required to attend safeguarding training and undergo a criminal record check.