Role: Circular Economy Policy Lead

Location: UK Flexible, Madrid

Role ID: 2023-2063

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. 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.

The Role

This is a new role, to reflect our ambitions to expand our team’s reach further into circular economy policy. This role will be in partnership with Ricardo’s circular economy team that focus on implementing circular economy in business models. Through this partnership, and with the support and backing of our business area managers, this role is for a leader to build up a track record of successes in circular economy policy studies. This will include building relationships with partners and collaborators.

Key Responsibilities

• Working in international, multi-disciplinary teams, you will help to win, manage and deliver high profile projects that play an integral role in driving regulatory approaches in the UK, Europe and worldwide.
• You will lead the writing of high-quality competitive proposals for customers and will also undertake other business development activities such as partner relationship management and participation in promotional events.
• You will take an active role in leading (including managing) high profile and complex projects and building team capability in delivering technical input for projects across policy development and implementation analysis; evaluating existing policy and technical measures; supporting cost-benefit analyses, carrying out stakeholder consultations and report writing.
• You will support the development of more junior colleagues.

 Key Competencies and Experience

• Qualified to Master’s degree level in environmental policy, science, engineering, law, economics, social sciences or a closely related subject.
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of environmental legislation and strategies in Europe relating to the circular economy, including knowledge of business models, investment and/or financing for promoting circularity.
• Experience working within projects for clients such as the European Commission, World Bank, GIZ, EBRD, Asian Development Bank and UK Government.
• Technical understanding and/or familiarity with industry and/or construction sectors and/or product design and life cycle principles and/or industrial symbiosis.
• Experience managing projects with high level of commercial awareness and appreciation for project financial management principles.
• Experience in writing winning proposals in a consultancy environment.
• Experience in and enthusiasm for wider business development activities and relationship building.
• Familiarity with the process of policy development and implementation, evaluation of technical and policy measures, cost-benefit analysis, data collection, validation and analysis.
• Excellent written and spoken English, including concise and precise report writing – fluency in another European language would be desirable.
• The ability to demonstrate leadership, teamwork and influencing – previous team management experience would be desirable.
• Offer an analytical, problem solving and creative approach.
• Have flexibility, resilience and enthusiasm.

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.

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.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer - please advise the recruitment team via recruit.ee@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.