Charles Woodburn

Group Chief Executive Officer BAE Systems

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Dr Charles Woodburn CBE is Group Chief Executive Officer of BAE Systems plc, the London-listed defence, aerospace and security group. He is an engineer who spent the first two decades of his working life in oilfield services - fifteen years at Schlumberger across Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States, then six running Expro Group - before moving into defence, joining BAE Systems as Chief Operating Officer in May 2016 and becoming Chief Executive on 1 July 2017. His tenure has spanned the sharpest rise in Western defence budgets since the Cold War and BAE’s involvement in the AUKUS submarine partnership and the Global Combat Air Programme. He was appointed CBE in the honours list published at the end of 2023, for services to international trade and skills development rather than for defence work as such, and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Career Highlights

• Became Group Chief Executive of BAE Systems on 1 July 2017, succeeding Ian King, having joined the company as Chief Operating Officer in May 2016.
• Appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Civil Division, in the honours notice published in The London Gazette on 29 December 2023, for services to International Trade and Skills Development.
• Elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
• Joined the UK government’s Board of Trade as a board adviser in March 2025.
• Chief Executive Officer of Expro Group, the oil and gas well flow management services company, until 2016.
• Spent fifteen years at Schlumberger Limited in senior management positions across four continents.
• Trustee and steering group member, and former chair, of the youth employment charity Movement to Work.

Professional Journey

Woodburn read electrical sciences at St John’s College, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1992, and stayed on at Cambridge for a doctorate in engineering. He joined Schlumberger, the oilfield services group, in 1995, and spent fifteen years there in senior management roles in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States - a stretch of international operating experience that BAE’s own biography still leads with.

He left to become Chief Executive of Expro Group, the well flow management business, running it through to 2016. Expro is a mid-sized private company rather than a listed one, and the job gave him full profit-and-loss responsibility for a global engineering services operation for the first time.

BAE Systems recruited him in May 2016 as Chief Operating Officer, a role created in part as a succession step. Just over a year later, on 1 July 2017, he succeeded Ian King as Group Chief Executive. BAE describes his experience as spanning more than 28 years across defence, aerospace, oil and gas.

The period since has been defined by external events rather than by any single strategic pivot: the return of state-on-state conflict in Europe, sustained increases in NATO and allied defence spending, the AUKUS trilateral submarine partnership, the Global Combat Air Programme with Italy and Japan, and BAE’s support for the Ukrainian armed forces - the work for which the 2023 honours citation credits him under the heading of international trade. He was quoted on the group’s 2026 half year results in July 2026, and remains in post.

Beyond the company he sits on the UK government’s Board of Trade as a board adviser, an appointment made in March 2025, and is a trustee and former chair of Movement to Work, the charity that places young people not in education, employment or training into work placements.

Education

St John’s College, University of Cambridge

Bachelor’s degree, Electrical Sciences, 1992

University of Cambridge

PhD, Engineering

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Master of Business Administration