The Big Interview: Johanna Hutchinson, CDO, BAE Systems

Johanna Hutchinson grew up in Preston, an industrial city in northern England with a long history of military aircraft production – and a major manufacturing hub for BAE Systems Tempest and Typhoon aircraft.  

“I grew up with the planes flying over the house intermittently. It was part of our community and our society up there,” Hutchinson, now BAE Systems first chief data officer, tells The Stack. 

BAE Systems is now one of the largest defense contractors in the world with 111,000 employees and a £83.6 billion order backlog.

When Hutchinson joined in 2022, the company was “culturally at the heart of where I've lived in the UK” and also her sister’s employer, which helped it feel “very familiar to me,” she says.

BAE Systems’ CDO is focused on backlog

One of her roles is to ensure BAE Systems can deliver its defense and aerospace orders in a timely manner; using data to understand how it can tackle current and future backlog as demand increases.