Principal Water Quality Modeller

Bristol, United Kingdom / Cambridge, United Kingdom / Leeds, United Kingdom / London, United Kingdom / Manchester, United Kingdom

Location/s: Bristol, Cambridge, Leeds, London & Manchester;UK (other UK office locations considered)

Recruiter contact: Laura Easdon

Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy with over 20,000 employees across more than 50 countries and 140+ offices.

We work across incredible global industries, delivering exciting work that is defining our future and making an important societal impact in the communities we serve. Our people power our performance - we succeed when they do. With countless opportunities to collaborate, learn, and grow, the possibilities for excellence are as varied as every individual.

Whether you want to grow as a subject matter expert or broaden your experience with roles across our international community, you're surrounded by global specialists who want to combine their expertise and champion you to be your best. As a proudly employee-owned business, we benefit our clients, our communities, and each other, investing in creating the right space for everyone to feel empowered, included, and valued. Whatever your ambition, Mott MacDonald is where people come to be brilliant.

About the division The Water Consultancy Division is the centre of excellence within Mott MacDonald for responding to water and wastewater challenges, providing support to colleagues across our global business, and offering fantastic opportunities to get involved in diverse and technically challenging work. Climate change, aging assets, and population growth place increasing pressure on our water and wastewater assets. Our highly successful water consultancy business is servicing ever-increasing demands from water sector clients to help deliver ambitious capital programmes. The work we do is at the forefront of ensuring safe water supplies for future generations and protecting our environment.

With sustainability, social impacts, digitalisation, and carbon reduction in mind, our diverse and multi-disciplinary teams work together to provide a variety of services throughout the full project life-cycle, from advisory services and feasibility studies, through outline and detailed design, to construction support and site supervision.

Overview of the role Do you want to work for a company whose purpose is to improve society by considering social outcomes, and to transform businesses, communities, and opportunities for its employees? Mott MacDonald is a global consultancy whose people do exactly that.

As a Principal Integrated Catchment Water Quality Modeller, you will be part of a large team of specialists in wastewater networks, river impact assessments, water resources and flood risk, working closely with our teams of engineers and asset planners to deliver a wide range of services for UK and international clients. This will give you opportunities to work with both bespoke and industry standard hydrodynamic and water quality modelling packages and to innovate beyond the current standards. You will work with industry leading experts to develop integrated drainage and river network models, investigate the natural processes influencing the fate of contaminants, build ad-hoc assessment tools tailored to project specific needs and undertake statistical analyses. For those with related interests, there are many opportunities to get involved across our teams on activities such as hydrology, systems modelling, groundwater modelling, flood modelling and computational fluid dynamics. We therefore welcome applications from people with varied backgrounds and skillsets.

Your input will help our project teams and clients to deliver complex multidisciplinary projects, including addressing the impacts of storm overflows, resulting in strategic decisions, engineering solutions and the desirable social outcomes that you can be proud of. Whether it is ensuring future discharge compliance in light of climate change and population growth, preventing sewage from spilling to rivers, estuaries, lakes and reservoirs or exploring how wetlands can play a key role in reducing pollution, your work will bring lasting benefits to local communities and the environment around the world.

Key responsibilities and duties include

• Delivering complex modelling projects - working with experts across a range of disciplines to apply your attention to detail and numerical skills to environmental engineering projects
• Analysing large datasets to distil out patterns and relationships and provide insights and foresights to inform effective decisions and interventions to create positive social and environmental impacts
• Managing projects and maintaining client relationships
• Assisting with proposal writing, winning work and the development of new business by providing key technical inputs
• Supporting and training to junior colleagues, where practicable, mentoring and developing early career professionals

Mott MacDonald is a unique company with a strong sense of purpose to improve society by considering social outcomes in everything we do, relentlessly focusing on excellence and digital innovation, transforming our clients' business, our communities and employee opportunities.

You can look forward to many opportunities to do great things in Mott MacDonald. We combine heritage, vision and values into an ethos that encourages innovative thinking and career progression, whether technical, management or commercial/client-facing. Our employee-owned structure brings us the flexibility to pursue our values freely. With us, you will have control of your own career path and technical direction, which we will support by giving you the opportunities to face new challenges and take more responsibilities.

Required for the position of Principal Integrated Catchment Water Quality Modeller

• Relevant degree level qualifications (e.g. geography, mathematics, environmental sciences, civil engineering, or other related disciplines)
• Chartered with an appropriate professional body
• Proven track record in successful delivery of SOAF and UPM projects (all levels) for UK water companies
• Good understanding of hydrodynamics, sediments and water quality processes
• Expertise in industry standard software such as InfoWorks ICM and/or MIKE11
• Coding skills and statistical foundations will be an advantage
• Willingness to innovate
• Able to guide and mentor junior staff

With the ongoing and future impact of climate change and the increasing regulation to protect the ecology of our waterbodies, there is an increasing need for river and catchment modelling to assess water quality compliance and to advise on potential mitigation. We have an excellent track record in supporting UK water companies in SOAF and UPM studies and an industry leading position in developing innovative modelling approaches in InfoWorks ICM and FMP.

Our expertise expands to cover coastal water quality investigations, source apportionment assessments, catchment management modelling and the application of nature-based solutions to tackle pollution.

We have secured major AMP8 frameworks with UK water companies, and we have a global reach to support regulators, asset owners and investors worldwide. The current huge public and political pressure to resolve the issue of storm overflows which has resulted in massive demand for these services, and in response to this we are keen to engage talented catchment modellers to drive innovation, work across disciplines in complex modelling projects, support the development of our people and strengthen our offering. This position can be offered on a full time or a part time basis.

UK Immigration Mott MacDonald Ltd. are not currently offering sponsorship to candidates under the Skilled Worker visa route in the UK. This decision is as a consequence of the changes made to the Skilled Worker route by the UK Government in April 2024. We continue to welcome applications from candidates who are eligible for alternative immigration routes in the UK, that do not require sponsorship as a Skilled Worker now or in future.

At Mott MacDonald, we believe it makes business sense for you and your manager to choose how you can work most effectively to meet your client, team, and personal commitments. We offer a hybrid working policy that embraces your well being, flexibility, and trust.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion We put equality, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of our business, seeking to promote fair employment procedures and practices to ensure equal opportunities for all. We encourage individual expression in our workplace and are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels they can contribute.

Accessibility We want you to perform your best at every stage in the recruitment process. If you are disabled or need any support to enable you to apply or attend an interview, please contact us at and we will talk to you about how we can support you.

We offer some fantastic benefits including Financial wellbeing

• We match employee pension contributions between 4.5% and 7%.
• Life assurance equal up to 4 x your basic salary, with an option to increase the level of cover to 6 x your salary.
• Our income protection scheme provides a financial benefit, as well as absence and return to work support due to long term illness or injury.
• Flexible benefits, including increased life assurance cover, critical illness insurance, payroll saving and will writing.
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