Captain Keith Stephenson

Captain Keith Stephenson joined the Royal Navy in 1992 after graduating from Trinity College, Oxford, and after operational deployments he wrote an MSc in the Design of Information Systems with Cranfield University in 2005. He was appointed technical lead at the Fleet Information Management Unit, FIMU, in Portsmouth and then to his Command Tour as Head of the Royal Navy’s CIS Training Unit at HMS COLLINGWOOD.

On promotion to Commander he was posted to Navy Command Resources and Plans (RP) for three years, first with responsibility for the Above Water Desk and latterly as the Lead Planner looking across the entire Maritime portfolio.  Promoted to Captain in 2018 he was appointed to the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) in Northwood, West London, as DACOS J6 for Europe and Africa; with an overarching responsibility for Defensive Cyber across all PJHQ operations.

From 2020-2023 Keith was the Military Lead in the Defence Innovation Unit (DIU) with a remit for many of the unit’s most challenging technical projects and programmes and engagement across the Front- Line Commands.  In addition to his technical input he also designed many of the processes uses to deliver novel programmes including the Spear-Head and Gamechanger programmes.

This was followed by a short tour in MOD Head Office as a Strategic Planner for Ukraine, before he was selected to be the Head of NavyX, the RN’s Autonomy and Lethality accelerator from June 23.  Under his leadership Navy X switched focus to support operations and deliver the most challenging technical projects, primarily focussed on high degree autonomy.

Since Oct 25 he has been the military lead, with cross domain responsibility, for Task Force Kindred procurement.