2022 Legal and Contracts Graduate

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Job description

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that's why we offer you the flexibility to do what's important to you; whether that's part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

We're inventing the future, right here, right now, at Thales. By combining the curiosity to explore, the intelligence to question and the vision to create, we're transforming the world around us.

The Legal and Contract team ensures the commercial integrity of all the commitments we make as a company. The team also makes sure that everything we do complies with our legal, ethical and contractual responsibilities. This means overseeing contractual affairs at every stage, from bidding and negotiation to project delivery and contract closure.

The two-year Legal and Contracts Graduate Development Programme ('L&C GDP') will give you significant experience of bid preparation, contract negotiation and post-award contract management across four challenging work placements. Placements are in different areas of the Thales UK business and can include a placement in the Thales UK in-house legal departments gaining experience in the corporate and commercial legal disciplines.

Location:

You'll be expected to complete four six-month placements across various Thales sites and businesses in the UK so flexibility on your location is required for this role as you may need to re-locate for different placements. Our main sites are; Crawley, Glasgow, Bristol, Belfast, Reading, Cheadle, London and Templecombe.

Key responsibilities:

• Evaluating and advising on commercial risk in bids and recommending mitigation strategies
• Preparation of costing and pricing models and presentations
• Interpreting contractual documents and making amendments to existing and potential contracts
• Advising on potential liabilities, risks, issues and disputes arising with customers, suppliers, or third parties and working within multi-functional teams to reduce company risk and exposure
• Contributing to the successful delivery of contracts by managing the commercial aspects of the delivery to the customer as part of a multi-disciplinary team
• Ensuring appropriate export licences are in place, including liaising with supply chain to understand the export classification of goods
• Taking on commercial reviews of proposal documents and reviewing customer/third party terms and conditions

Desired skills, qualifications and experience:

• You will be on track to or have achieved a bachelor's degree in any subject; however subjects that have enabled you to develop analytical skills and business acumen such a Law or Business Studies are of particular interest
• You'll be a team player with good interpersonal, verbal and written communication and organisational skills
• You'll have excellent attention to detail, along with the ability to effectively summarise (oral and written)
• You should be commercially aware (including having some understanding of the role of the Contracts Management function) and be able to bring a professional attitude to colleagues and customers alike
• You should be comfortable trying new things
• A candidate who is comfortable working with and understanding the interpretation of financial data would be desirable

During your time on the L&C GDP you will take part in the 'Passport to Contract Management' course (usually in your first year) and you will undertake the 'Fundamentals of Contract and Commercial Management' course run by the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) (usually in your second year). On successful completion of the L&C GDP you will start in a role in the Contracts Management function supporting one of the Thales UK businesses.

Please note that Graduate Development Programme (GDP) activities take place during the working week but may require the investment of some personal time for travel and follow-up activities. You may have the opportunity to travel to Thales and non-Thales sites throughout the UK when participating in GDP activities.