Chief Data Officer — Commercial-Aerospace Programme

The mandate

A commercial-aerospace programme is establishing a new Chief Data Officer role to make configuration, test and concession evidence traceable and usable across engineering, quality teams and factories without replacing authorised engineering judgement.

Approximately 825 employees and material partners work across data engineering, governance, analytics, configuration, certification, industrial and programme functions from Toulouse. The CDO owns data strategy, products, standards, governance, platforms and responsible analytics, reporting to the Group Chief Executive or nominated sponsor. Design, certification, quality and safety conclusions remain with authorised specialists.

The first product is a certified configuration evidence view. Aircraft or unit identity, design baseline, modification, software, material, concession and test result must connect through governed identifiers. The CDO will expose ambiguity and source conflict rather than force a convenient single value.

Data lineage needs engineering meaning. Transformation, unit conversion, aggregation and exclusion can change conclusions. Decision-critical products will retain source, version, logic and approval, allowing an independent specialist to reproduce the result.

Test evidence requires context. A result depends on article, configuration, procedure, equipment, environment and acceptance criteria. The data organisation will prevent reuse beyond applicability and flag incomplete metadata before a programme treats a pass as supporting certification.

Concessions and deviations should link to affected units and evidence. Text-heavy records make trends difficult. The CDO will create governed classifications with technical stewards, preserving narrative and authorised disposition. Analytics may identify recurrence but cannot determine airworthiness.

Industrial delivery data will connect work, material, quality and acceptance. The aim is to identify constraint and rework source, not create another executive dashboard. Product owners will have named decisions and measures such as reduced reconciliation or earlier intervention.

Supplier data need controlled exchange and provenance. Inspection, certificates, process and test information must link to received material. The CDO will define standards, validation and acknowledgement while respecting technical-data and contractual restrictions.

Certification authorities and customers may require specific evidence packages. Data products should support reproducible submission and response, with controlled snapshots and audit. Dynamic dashboards cannot replace the retained record of what was submitted at a point in time.

Advanced analytics will be consequence-governed. Models may predict defect, test failure or delivery risk, but need training provenance, performance, explainability, monitoring and human review. A useful prioritisation tool cannot silently become an approval gate.

Data rights and access will follow programme, purpose and user. Aggregated performance may be broadly useful while technical details remain restricted. The CDO will design tiered products and prevent uncontrolled copying into general tools. Cross-border access requires authorisation.

Standards will balance reuse and legacy reality. New programmes should adopt common identifiers and metadata; old evidence may require mappings and confidence. The CDO will avoid costly retrospective perfection where decision value is low, documenting limitations instead.

Data quality is owned at source. Central teams can monitor and enable, but engineering, test and supply leaders remain stewards. Priority, resolution and consequence will be visible. Training alone will not fix a workflow that makes correct capture difficult.

The data function will combine engineers, product leaders and stewards. Technical specialists need career paths and credibility with certification teams. The CDO will build succession and ensure knowledge of evidence logic does not remain with contractors.

What you will own

• Aerospace certification and delivery data strategy.
• Configuration evidence and identifier governance.
• Test, concession and supplier lineage.
• Submission snapshots and reproducibility.
• Responsible predictive analytics.
• Controlled access, rights and cross-border use.
• Data-product adoption and source stewardship.
• Data talent and succession.

The first 12 months

Within 60 days, map priority certification decisions to sources, identify conflicting configuration evidence and stop any critical product that cannot be reproduced. Appoint stewards.

By month six, release configuration and test evidence products, implement supplier validation and govern predictive models. Build retained submission snapshots.

At twelve months, reduce certification-data reconciliation by 60%, achieve 98% lineage completeness for decision-critical evidence and cut configuration-related delivery exceptions by 35%. At least four data products should show adopted engineering or industrial decisions, with no model used beyond approved purpose or unauthorised technical-data disclosure.

What the sponsor will examine

• Configuration conflicts visible before conclusion.
• Test results bounded by applicability.
• Concessions linked to affected units.
• Submissions reproducible from retained evidence.
• Models informing rather than authorising decisions.
• Source teams owning data quality.

The person

You bring 18–22 years in aerospace data, engineering informatics, analytics or configuration, including enterprise leadership. Your record includes certification evidence, test lineage, supplier data and responsible models deployed into technical decisions.

Candidates must show a combined dataset they refused because applicability failed and a product that reduced certification delay. The permanent role is onsite in Toulouse. Security and export eligibility applies.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is EUR 285,000–390,000 plus annual incentive and long-term participation linked to evidence quality, certification speed, delivery, control and data leadership. The permanent onsite Toulouse role reports to the Group Chief Executive or nominated executive-committee sponsor. Planned hiring supports the certification reset.

Confidentiality

The programme, aircraft, configurations, tests, customers, suppliers, models and certification evidence remain confidential. Further disclosure follows eligibility, conflicts and signed confidentiality. Applicants must not contact aerospace companies or authorities to identify the client.