The UK arm of Spanish space-technology group GMV, based at the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire, working on satellite navigation, space debris tracking, mission planning and robotics.
GMV NSL is the UK company of GMV, a Spanish technology group that builds software and systems for space, defence, transport and other fields. In the UK its work covers Earth observation, tracking space debris, mission planning, flight dynamics (working out how spacecraft move and how to steer them), navigation, autonomy and robotics. It is also strong in satellite navigation, the technology behind systems such as GPS and Europe's Galileo, which many people use every day without thinking about it. Its customers named in the company's own news include the European Space Agency, the European Commission, the UK Space Agency, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Innovate UK, the Satellite Applications Catapult and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
The business has two roots. GMV set up a UK company in late 2014 as part of an international expansion plan that began in 2013. In September 2020 it merged that company with Nottingham Scientific Limited (NSL), a UK small business founded in 1998 that specialised in satellite navigation systems and services. GMV said the merged business aimed to take on bigger challenges in the UK market, especially in space, and to become the leading player in Britain's space sector. It said the teams' shared values and approach to technical excellence and client satisfaction were important to the deal. We did not find a longer mission statement, so we have not invented one.
In the UK, the main base is the Harwell Innovation Centre on the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire, which is the heart of the UK's biggest space cluster. In April 2022 the company opened a new office there, named Airspeed 2, which includes a robotic lab. The business also keeps its Nottingham roots from the NSL side of the merger, where the older company had its head office. At the time of the merger the combined UK business had about 80 staff, and the 2022 office announcement said up to 60 people were based in the Harwell office across several divisions. These figures are now dated.
On culture, the company describes the Harwell office as offering a flexible way of working. Mark Dumville, the chief executive of GMV NSL, opened it, and the company says that since the merger it has won important contracts, grown significantly and hired experienced staff for key roles. The wider GMV group had more than 2,000 staff at the end of 2019, so UK employees are part of a larger international group, which can mean working on projects with colleagues in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
The roles at a company like this are mostly technical. They include software engineers, navigation and signal specialists, flight dynamics analysts, space debris and situational awareness analysts, robotics engineers and project managers, supported by finance, contracts and administration staff. Subjects such as maths, physics, engineering, computer science and geography feed into this kind of work.
Website: www.gmv.com
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