Chris Burns

He’s the life of the party, say friends of Chris Burns, a project manager at Elbit Systems UK (ESUK): an optimist with a love of people. There’s something to that, he agrees. “I’m quite an energetic guy. I really like to travel the world, exercise, spend time with friends”.

Ever-energetic Chris has, by age 30, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, camped in the Amazon and much more, and also managed to change career direction in the world of military technology.

Chris was born and raised in Northern Ireland, living with parents, grandparents, and younger brother Jonny. “I grew up in a small town, Portadown, near Belfast, and studied chemistry at Loughborough University” he says.

Chris graduated from Loughborough University with honors and joined a pharmaceuticals company, but pursuing opportunity, moved to the British Ministry of Defence. After a period with the force protection electronic counter measures delivery team, he accepted a job offer at ESUK.

“The transition to defense was natural for me. I was always interested in it: maybe it has to do with where I grew up,” he says. “I like the feeling of influencing, managing tasks, and from this viewpoint, the work at the Ministry of Defence was very fulfilling. After that, I realized that in order to see the big picture, I needed experience on the business side”.

He joined the ESUK C4I Business Unit as a project manager about three years ago, as was starting to grow from a few dozen employees to hundreds.

“The beginning was very challenging,” he says. “At first, I accompanied projects and gradually took on more powers and advanced to more complex projects.” Among other things, Chris managed projects for products in Elbit operational C4I application, developed for the British Army’s tactical ops, as well as an airborne C4I product for a Canadian customer. Recently, he led projects to develop group capabilities for autonomous drones and robotic vehicles, also for the British Army.

Chris likes the joint work culture with the teams in Israel. “There is trust and a natural openness between us, which easily bridges cultural gaps. This creates a force-multiplier of our image as one Elbit.”

“What I like best about my job is meeting new people and being able to deliver the best capability to the end users and make a real impact to the UK government”.

“The transition to defense was natural for me. I was always interested in it: maybe it has to do with where I grew up”