Are you a senior water consultancy professional with the technical expertise and commercial credibility to shape and grow a freshwater management discipline? Do you have strong relationships across the water industry and a clear understanding of the AMP cycle, emerging client needs and where the market is heading? Are you excited by the opportunity to build innovative services around catchment management and nature-based solutions, while leading a high-performing team?
Our Freshwater Management Discipline is well established, with a broadening portfolio spanning full catchment approaches, nature-based solutions, water permitting, environmental engineering and strategic support to the water industry. We’re looking for a Freshwater Management Discipline Director to take the discipline into its next phase of growth.
Success in this role means becoming a trusted strategic partner to key water industry clients, using your sector knowledge and network to understand what they need next and turn that insight into high-value opportunities. You’ll build strategic relationships and frameworks, strengthen our pipeline and help shape the services we offer, ensuring APEM stays ahead of regulatory and market changes rather than simply responding to them.
A major part of the opportunity is developing our nature-based solutions and catchment management capability. You’ll help shape how we combine data, surveys and interpretive consultancy with innovative approaches to water and environmental challenges, creating solutions that deliver genuine value for clients. Alongside this, you’ll lead the commercial and operational performance of the Discipline, ensuring we have the right capability, resources and structures in place to deliver excellent work profitably and at scale.
To be successful in this role, you’ll need:
- Significant technical expertise in freshwater management, ideally across environmental engineering, water permitting or nature-based solutions
- Proven experience delivering water consultancy services, with strong understanding of the project lifecycle and commercial delivery
- Established relationships and a successful track record across the water industry and AMP cycle
- Experience combining technical delivery with business strategy, client development and work winning
- Strong commercial understanding, including budgets, forecasting, pipeline and profitability
- Proven leadership experience, with a track record of developing high-performing teams
- Excellent stakeholder management skills and the confidence to work with senior leaders, clients and partners across the business
Bonus points if you have:
- A strong track record in nature-based solutions or catchment management
- Experience across water permitting or environmental engineering
- A relevant postgraduate qualification or professional membership
- Experience using data and applied consultancy reporting to inform client solutions
- Experience working internationally or across a wider environmental consultancy group
At APEM, you’ll have the opportunity to do more than lead projects, you’ll define and grow a discipline. You’ll shape our freshwater management offering, build a reputation in the market, develop a talented team and help position APEM at the forefront of innovative solutions to the water sector’s biggest environmental challenges.
If you’re looking for a senior leadership role where your water industry knowledge, client network and passion for nature-based solutions can genuinely shape the future of the business, we’d love to hear from you.
Next steps
We are focused on creating a diverse and inclusive team. If you can’t tick every box on our job description, then we are still keen to hear from you and are open to supporting your development. That may be working part time or supporting you to gain experience in a specific area – we are a growing company and are able to adapt roles to reflect individual skills.
If you think you have what it takes to join our fast-growing business, then please apply immediately on our website. All we need some basic information and your CV, we will review all applications quickly and will respond to all applications.
The APEM Group is a global environmental consultancy, we work with a range of clients including large corporations and governments to help them understand and solve a wide variety of environmental projects in the UK and globally. Our successful pioneering work has enabled us to grow and combine forces with other businesses who share our ethos and integrity. At our core, our people are working towards the protection of the environment across the globe.
