Join United Utilities as a Senior Design Manager (Senior Project Engineer) in Greater Manchester for a hybrid role combining capital project delivery, technical leadership, and sustainable engineering solutions.
Requirements
Post-graduate experience in a project engineering management role and professionally qualified (degree or equivalent).
Member of Association for Project Management (APM) or an Engineering Institution with evidence of working towards professional registration.
Proven ability to integrate technical inputs and communicate with stakeholders.
Experience in health, safety, and well-being requirements (CDM Principal Designer or Client roles).
Experience adopting innovation and environmental solutions.
Skills & Responsibilities
Project Engineering Management: Lead and coordinate the design function across complex capital projects from brief to handover.
Stakeholder Engagement: Engage with consultants, specialists, and multi-disciplinary teams to achieve time, cost, carbon, and quality drivers.
Risk & Technical Assurance: Write project documentation, act as a technical assurance point of contact, and contribute to risk management.
Health and Safety: Act as the Principal Designer under CDM where required, ensuring safe-to-build and operate designs.
Potential transition routes: People from project management, civil engineering, or design management roles may bring relevant technical and coordination skills, alongside meeting mandatory project engineering and professional membership requirements.
Job description
The role
As a Senior Design Manager (Senior Project Engineer) within the Better Rivers (Greater Manchester) Capital Delivery team, you’ll be responsible for helping to leading & coordinating the design function across multiple high-value, complex capital projects. Working with a Senior Project Engineer you’ll help provide technical and strategic leadership to ensure designs are safe, efficient, innovative, and fully aligned with regulatory, operational, and sustainability goals.
What you’ll do:
Work collaboratively with the Project delivery team to jointly deliver project outcomes. The project delivery team could be a mix of internal (Delivery Managers, Discipline Engineers, Project Managers etc) or external (delivery partners, contractors etc) colleagues.
As required, to deputise for the Senior Design Manager / Senior Project Engineer (SPE)
Contribute to maintaining proactive empathetic relationships to creating a healthy, inclusive and diverse team environment.
Engaging with consultants and specialist and working within a multi-disciplinary teams across the matrix organisation to delivery designs which are safe to build and operate, delivered to time, cost, carbon and quality drivers.
Contribute to the project engineering input to projects throughout the lifecycle of a project, in accordance with approved processes and systems and achieving time, cost, carbon and quality drivers.
Delivering the project engineering plan from client brief (requirements statement) through to handover. Where required, support the client in developing their brief (requirement statement) and support the project within the identification phase.
Carry out project reviews, recommend / take action as appropriate and report on a monthly basis
Responsible for writing project documentation and technical reports. Acting as a point of contact for technical assurance throughout the lifecycle
Contribute to risk management to drive the delivery of opportunities or threat reduction, including adequate escalation of issues outside of your control
Embed standardisation into all aspects of the AMP8 project delivery.
Being the champion for the project within the business and from time to time representing the project externally
Positively support the transition of new ways of working across the project community
Building and maintaining relationships with key internal and external stakeholders
Act as the Principal Designer under CDM, where required.
What we’re looking for:
Post graduate experience in project engineering management role and professionally qualified (degree or equivalent).
Member of Association for Project Management (APM) or an Engineering Institution and tangible evidence of working towards professional registration (Chartered Project Professional, Chartered Engineer, etc).
Proven ability to integrate input from different technical areas and other departments
Proven communication skills with an ability to engage with stakeholders and colleagues to develop solutions to complex problems
Proven experience of health, safety and well-being requirements relating to delivery of projects (e.g. CDM Principal Designer or Client roles)
Experience of adopting innovation, particularly with emerging technologies and/or environmental solutions
What we offer:
A generous annual leave package of 26 days, which increases to 30 days after four years of service, in addition to 8 bank holidays
A competitive pension scheme with up to 14% employer contribution, 21% combined, and life cover
Up to 10.5% performance-related bonus scheme, as well as recognition awards for outstanding achievements
A comprehensive healthcare plan through our company-funded scheme
At UU, we champion flexible ways of working. In-person attendance is required three days per week to promote the benefits of face-to-face collaboration alongside flexibility of hours to support work-life balance. Initially, you may be expected to attend more frequently to familiarise yourselves with the site, the team, and your role.
About United Utilities:
United Utilities’ (UU) mission is to deliver high-quality water for a stronger, greener and healthier North West of England. We are committed to providing our services in a way that respects the environment, supports the economy, and benefits society. We are proud to be ranked #11 in The Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List. We value diversity, inclusion and innovation in our workplace, and we foster a culture where our people can grow, excel, and be themselves.
We uphold our ethics, values and business model to fulfil our mission and, by setting clear goals and objectives, we create sustainable long-term value for our colleagues, customers and communities. Whether you work with a team that shares your vision or join a network of peers with similar interests, you will find a welcoming and supportive organisation to be part of.
