Role: Net Zero Technical Director

Location: Flexible UK

Role ID: 2023-1770

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Energy & Environment, one of Ricardo plc’s five operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy & strategy to implementation.

Our Sustainability Business Area has a strong pipeline of projects and opportunities across a wide variety of sectors. The team are a passionate and committed group of technical specialists covering a wide spectrum of sustainability topics, including energy and carbon management.

We are seeking to recruit an experienced Associate Director or Technical Director as a Knowledge Leader for our energy and carbon management technical area to drive and help direct the growth of this team and make a significant contribution to Ricardo Energy & Environment’s portfolio of net zero, energy and carbon management projects in the UK and worldwide.

Purpose:

The successful candidate will:

• Support strategic planning for continued growth in this area.
• Be involved in winning energy and carbon management, net zero, and supply chain and scope 3 work, through technical contributions to proposals for a range of private sector clients.
• Provide technical leadership and senior oversight during project delivery for a range of private sector clients, demonstrating experience of working face-to-face with clients and managing their expectations.
• Identify and develop new innovative, client focused, technical offerings, and maintain and expand existing offerings, to optimise advantage in target markets and enhance Ricardo Energy & Environment’s reputation as an industry leader.
• Build and maintain client and partner relationships to maximise net zero and carbon management related opportunities, working in collaboration with our technical specialists.
• Demonstrate professional excellence through knowledge leadership and raising the profile of Ricardo Energy & Environment’s services. 
• Mentor and develop staff within the team.

Key competences and experience:

• Significant experience and deep knowledge across several of the following technical areas:

• Energy and carbon management planning and strategy.
• Net Zero strategy development.
• Scope 3.
• Carbon footprinting, verification and reporting.
• Energy auditing and identification of energy saving and decarbonisation measures.
• Carbon sequestration and offsetting.

• Experience in delivery of consultancy projects to the private sector, including leading multi-disciplinary multi-partner teams.
• Experience of identifying and developing business opportunities.
• Experience in writing successful bids to private sector clients.
• Excellent customer focus, and experience in partner liaison and wider stakeholder engagement, with existing relevant client and partner networks and relationships.
• Expert knowledge of current and emerging legislation and policy influencing carbon and climate change.

• A degree / post-graduate qualification in a relevant discipline.

Skills and behaviours:

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate and collaborate at all levels both within the company and across the wider industry.
• Good analytical skills.
• Excellent commercial focus.
• Strong presentation and facilitation skills.
• Line management and mentoring skills,
• Proactive networker.
• The ability to work in a multi-disciplinary team.
• Membership of a relevant institute, preferably at a chartered or equivalent level.

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Next Steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.