United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory
Plant Engineering Manager
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Job Description for Plant Engineering Manager
There’s never been a more exciting time to be part of the nuclear sector. New opportunities are being created all the time. At UKNNL, you’ll be in the ideal place to capitalise on this momentum, face new challenges and develop a long, successful and meaningful career.
We’re an organisation that’s here to experiment and push the limits of what’s possible. So, if you’re keen to excel in your chosen field, this is the place to do it. Because at UKNNL, anything is possible.
Provide leadership and governance of engineering activities to ensure safe, reliable, and compliant operation of site infrastructure and technical capabilities. Developing and maintaining the engineering capability and system knowledge.
Deliver and sustain the asset lifecycle to ensure reliable performance and availability on demand and optimising asset lifecycle cost and performance. Accountable for engineering assurance, and regulatory compliance.
Drive continuous improvement, operational resilience, and capability development to support delivery of organisational objectives.
Main Responsibilities for Plant Engineering Manager
- Ensure availability, reliability, and lifecycle management of infrastructure and analytical equipment.
- Govern engineering activities and CDM compliance across internal and supply chain delivery.
- Lead engineering teams and contractors, ensuring safe, compliant, and effective performance.
- Maintain nuclear safety systems, defect management, and equipment condition oversight.
- Manage engineering budgets, forecasts, and cost control to support business continuity.
- Drive continuous improvement, regulatory engagement, and organisational learning from experience.
- Lead emergency response and business continuity arrangements, ensuring engineering support for incident recovery and resilience.
- Promote a positive safety and behavioural culture, enhancing morale and embedding best practice through visible leadership and role modelling.
Essential Criteria for Plant Engineering Manager
- Strong knowledge of UK nuclear regulatory frameworks and engineering governance.
- Understanding of asset lifecycle management, maintenance strategies, and reliability engineering.
- Relevant engineering qualification and/or professional registration (e.g., Chartered Engineer).
- Knowledge of CDM regulations and contractor management requirements.
- Demonstrated leadership of engineering functions in regulated environments.
- Proven capability in asset management, maintenance, and infrastructure reliability.
- Ability to obtain SC level security clearance (this includes but is not limited to identity, employment, financial and criminal record checks plus 5 years’ worth of UK residency).
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Desirable Criteria for Plant Engineering Manager
- Chartered status.
Why join us?
UKNNL isn’t just a place where you can do career-defining work that makes a real-world impact.
It’s also a place where you’ll feel appreciated and valued. We’re creating an inclusive workplace where everyone is free to be themselves and feel like they belong. We put your wellbeing first, we push you to reach your potential, and we do everything possible to help you feel safe, supported and inspired.
We also offer a range of employee benefits:
- Sector leading Family-Focused Policies: celebrate life events, including enhanced maternity and paternity leave and a week off for your marriage.
- UKNNL offers attractive pension plans. If you contribute 5%, UKNNL contributes 15%. Alternatively, if you choose not to contribute (0%), UKNNL will still contribute 10%.
- Annual Leave: Benefit from 25.5 days of leave, plus 4 extra days to be taken during Christmas shutdown, plus Bank Holidays.
- Reduced gym membership with discounts of up to 25% from 3,700 gym and leisure providers across the UK
- Company Bonus: Be rewarded for your contributions.
- Learning Opportunities: Enhance your skills through excellent development programmes.
- Employee Assistance: Access support for personal and professional challenges.
- Cycle to Work: Stay active and eco-friendly.
- Life Assurance: Ensure peace of mind for you and your loved ones.
- Enhanced Sick Pay Benefits: Receive support during illness or injury.
- Access to ‘Mydiscounts’ which has a range of special offers and discounts from more than 200 suppliers, including medical insurance and dental insurance.
- Health Care: Health savings plan which allows you to claim money back on visits to the dentist, optician and/or physiotherapist (limits apply).
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About The Company
UKNNL is an incredible place to work. A place where people do things that have never been done before. A place where people push boundaries to further themselves, the business and society as a whole.
This is a place where personal and professional opportunities are limitless. If you want to change the world, if you want to tackle climate change, if you want to help advance medical science, if you want to help put things in space, if you want to answer the big questions, if you want to work with extraordinary materials, if you want to meet great people, learn new skills, challenge yourself, work flexibly, and build a long successful career with the power to make a real impact… you can do it all here.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
UKNNL has a vision for Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (ED&I) where UKNNL aims to be an inclusive workplace that attracts diverse talent through transparent and equal policies and procedures, providing reasonable adjustments as appropriate. We want you and the diverse mix of people that we employ, customers that we service and stakeholders that we influence to feel valued. We encourage a workplace culture where everyone can thrive with a sense of belonging and the ability to access to workplace in a way which works for you.
Recruitment Agency Notice
We operate a strict Preferred Supplier List (PSL) for the provision of recruitment services. Only agencies on our PSL may provide CVs and only when the role is released to them by our recruitment team. We will not accept unsolicited CVs from suppliers not currently on our PSL. We explicitly reserve the right to add candidate details from unsolicited CVs from non-PSL agencies into our own candidate database and to pursue/hire such candidate(s) without any obligation, financial or otherwise, to the agency concerned.
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