Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.
Scottish Water is trusted to serve Scotland—and we’re transforming how we deliver infrastructure through standardisation. We’re looking for a forward-thinking leader to embed repeatable approaches and drive innovation across our capital programme.
This is your opportunity to lead a strategic transformation that improves how we design, build, and operate our assets—making every project faster, smarter, and more sustainable.
Why This Role Matters
Imagine a world where every project starts with a head start—where proven methods, pre-designed solutions, and shared best practices eliminate guesswork and accelerate delivery. That’s the power of standardisation, and you’ll be at the heart of it. You’ll lead the development and implementation of standardised delivery practices across Scottish Water’s capital programme—driving consistency, reducing costs and carbon, and improving performance.
What You’ll Be Doing
You will lead collaboration across engineering, consultancy, and delivery teams, embedding repeatable design and delivery practices across asset lifecycles. You will influence technical specifications, risk management, and value creation while supporting communities of practice and knowledge sharing. In addition, you will ensure alignment with regulatory standards, business needs, and customer expectations.
What You’ll Bring
You will bring engineering experience in design, construction, or operations—ideally in the water sector. You will have a proven ability to drive transformation and embed new ways of working, along with strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills. Experience in quality improvement and technical governance will also be key. You should be degree-qualified in engineering (or similar), ideally Chartered or working towards it.
This fixed term role offers a unique development opportunity to broaden your strategic influence, lead change at scale, and gain visibility across Scottish Water’s capital programme. You’ll be at the forefront of innovation, working with senior stakeholders and delivery partners to shape how infrastructure is delivered across Scotland.
You’ll need to be within commuting distance of one of our main offices in the central belt (Stepps, Edinburgh, or Stirling), and travel to the office is expected 1-2 times a week.
Looking out for you
While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance.
You’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take paid time off to volunteer in your community.
When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working.
For your future, there’s our pension (the ‘know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire’ kind), as well as life assurance.
As for some nice extras? You can expect an annual company bonus. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.
The not-so-small print
This role will be Grade 7. If you’re new to Scottish Water, you’ll join us on a starting salary of £44,030. Performance-driven pay progression would then allow you to move through the range to a maximum of £55,000.
If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be - we’ll be accepting applications until midnight on the 25th November 2025.
We operate Balanced Hybrid working at Scottish Water and we encourage people to work half their time in a Scottish Water location.
Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. Screening is conducted on our behalf by a third party, and must be completed before your start date. Don’t worry - we’ll only start these checks once you’ve accepted an offer.
A few final things worth knowing…
Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!
Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We're also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.
As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you'll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.
Please note, Scottish Water takes the safety, health and wellbeing of our employees, colleagues and customers very seriously and as such you may be subject to Drug & Alcohol testing in line with our policy.
Finally (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted.
We’re here to help. Ask us anything at SWRecruitment@ScottishWater.co.uk