Role: Climate and ESG Strategy and Reporting Principal Consultant

Location: London, Glasgow, Oxfordshire, Manchester, Flexible

Job ID: 2023 - 1765

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Are you passionate about creating positive change for a sustainable future? Do you have strong expertise in environmental, social, and governance issues, along with a strong understanding of sustainability strategy and reporting? If so, we are looking for an experienced ESG consultant to join our team.

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

As a Net Zero Principal Consultant, you'll have the opportunity to work with a wide range of clients, helping them develop and implement robust, credible ESG and sustainability strategies. You'll use your expertise to provide guidance on issues such as climate change, social responsibility, corporate governance, and stakeholder engagement, helping our clients make a positive impact while also enhancing their long-term success and value creation.

 We’d love to hear from you if you have the following competencies and experience:

• Have practical career experience and be able to demonstrate relevant technical capability, effective project management and excellent communication skills.
• Ideally have experience of working in the consultancy sector, to demonstrate that you have the necessary commercial awareness, but we are also interested to talk to candidates currently performing sustainability or ESG roles directly within industry, especially where they demonstrate strong commercial awareness.
• Excellent knowledge and practical experience of working with voluntary and mandatory sustainability standards, frameworks and ESG ratings and rankings is highly desirable. In particular: GRI, IFRS/ISSB, EFRAG (European Sustainability Reporting Standards), UN Global Compact, TCFD, UN SDGs, EU Taxonomy, MSCI, Sustainalytics, FTSE4Good, S&P Global, EcoVadis and CDP.
• Expertise in the following areas, climate and ESG strategy development and processes, climate-related and ESG materiality assessment and gap analysis, TCFD knowledge, climate transition planning, risk analysis and enterprise risk management integration and reporting and climate-related scenario and financial risk modelling.
• Be able to advise clients on the current and upcoming regulatory trends and voluntary developments shaping the sustainability / non-financial disclosure landscape – and the organisations driving this agenda (across NGOs, IGOs, ESG ratings and rankings agencies, etc.)
• Having experience of annual and integrated reporting and an understanding of TCFD guidance, UK FRC and FCA requirements and/or corporate risk reporting, auditing and scenario planning experience would be advantageous.
• Knowledge of sustainable finance, financial accounting and reporting would also be beneficial.

As an experienced Net Zero Principal Consultant you need to have the following skills and behaviours:

• Analytical skills with ability to identify, develop and implement solutions.
• Excellent writing skills to communicate clearly and without errors – accuracy and attention to detail are vital.
• Strong client and stakeholder communication skills e.g., influencing, negotiation, presentation, and relationship management skills.
• Project management skills that demonstrate ability to manage and account for time spent, and to deliver work on time and budget.
• Team working and leadership and ability to coordinate and prioritise activities to ensure delivery of agreed targets.
• Assisting with the development of climate and ESG thought leadership, our external profile and with clients.
• High levels of drive and commitment; a self-starter, problem solver with the ability to turn ideas into reality.
• A flexible approach – able to see where help is needed and support colleagues as necessary.
• Be comfortable juggling a variety of tasks in a sometimes fast-paced operational environment.

As an experienced Net Zero Principal Consultant your main responsibilities would be:

• Managing and delivering existing (and new) climate and ESG management projects, including TCFD, CDP, climate transition plans and scenario analysis.
• Acting as client lead for key projects and managing client expectations.
• Undertaking a project management role, controlling budgets and timings, and allocating tasks to colleagues as required.
• Liaising with specialist sub-contractors and build relationships internally and externally.
• Inputting your technical expertise to lead climate and ESG strategy and reporting client proposals.
• Contributing to the evolution of Ricardo’s climate and ESG commercial offerings by designing innovative client focused technical and reporting compliance solutions.
• Ensuring appropriate profile raising and marketing of Ricardo’s services and capabilities.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance 

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is 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.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

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

If our application process does not align with your requirements, please email recruit.ee@ricardo.com and we will make necessary arrangements to meet your needs.

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.