09 Sept 2026 David Muse, who joined Petards Joyce-Loebl Ltd in 2009, has been appointed as Chief Technical Officer. His new role expands on his technical leadership responsibilities across the company’s Rail and Defence activities and strengthens the alignment of Petards’ future product and technology strategy.
David has held increasingly senior technical roles within the business, most recently as Chief Technical Architect for Petards Rail. During his career with the business, he has gained experience across Emergency Services, Defence and Rail. David has played a significant role in the development and delivery of innovative, safety-critical technology solutions.
David will now provide strategic technical leadership across PJL, supporting the development and alignment of product and technology roadmaps across Rail and Defence. Working closely with the wider leadership and engineering teams, David will ensure the company stays well positioned to respond to emerging customer requirements, technological developments and future market opportunities. He will support the launch of Rail and Defence collaborations the latest being an AI-ready Defence vision platform and forthcoming trials of AI-assisted Rail technology.
Commenting on his appointment, David said, “I’m delighted to take on the role of Chief Technical Officer. It is a fantastic opportunity to bring our Rail and Defence capabilities together, combining experience in safety-critical systems, vision technology, ruggedised electronics, cyber security and intelligent edge processing to create a new generation of vision products for Defence.
“AI-enabled capability is becoming an increasingly important part of our technology roadmap. In Rail, we are looking at how intelligent functionality can be layered onto our established product portfolio to provide added insight and advisory capability without compromising the proven systems at its core. We are now approaching live trials of that capability, which is an exciting next step.”
Victoria Hodge, Managing Director, said: “David’s appointment reflects both the breadth of his technical capability within PJL and our ambition to make greater use of that ability across our Rail and Defence activities. His extensive experience of developing and delivering complex, safety-critical technology, together with his commercial understanding and knowledge of our markets, makes him well placed to lead the alignment of our technology strategy as we continue to invest in our established product portfolio and develop new capabilities.
“We see significant opportunity in bringing our engineering teams closer together, particularly as technologies such as intelligent vision, edge processing and AI create new possibilities for both Rail and Defence. David’s expanded role will help ensure those opportunities remain firmly focused on customer and operational requirements while supporting the continued growth of the business.”
David’s new remit comes at a key point in the development of PJL, increasing opportunities to share engineering knowledge and underlying technologies across its markets while continuing to develop products specifically for the environments in which they will operate.
Customer engagement will be central to that approach, with Petards Defence exhibiting at DVD for the first time, followed by Petards Rail attending InnoTrans, in Berlin.
David added, “Exhibiting at DVD2026 for the first time provides us with an important opportunity to put our developing vision platform in front of users and customers at an early stage, listen to their feedback and make sure we are addressing genuine operational requirements.
“We are designing the platform not only around today’s vision requirements, but with an architecture capable of supporting increasingly intelligent and AI-enabled functionality as those requirements develop.
“That will be followed by InnoTrans2026 for Petards Rail, where our focus stays firmly on advancing our established portfolio of onboard safety, video, connectivity and intelligent systems. Together, the two events show both the breadth of engineering capability within PJL and the opportunities we see for its future development.”
David’s expanded role will also support closer alignment between engineering, product strategy and commercial requirements, helping PJL identify where common technologies, and engineering principles can be shared while ensuring individual products remain appropriate to their target markets.
Rather than simply transferring products between sectors, the company sees an opportunity to combine established expertise across Rail and Defence to accelerate development, strengthen technology reuse where appropriate and create new solutions tailored to customer and operational needs.
For Rail, that means continuing to build on a proven portfolio of onboard safety, video and information systems while introducing new intelligent capabilities around those platforms. For Defence, it means combining the company’s established engineering expertise with a new vision architecture designed to support future AI-enabled situational awareness.
Together, these developments form part of a wider technology strategy for PJL: retaining the robustness and reliability of proven engineering while creating the architecture needed to adopt emerging technologies in a controlled, practical and customer-led wa