COWI
Principal Engineer (Civil / Structural)
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Principal Engineer (Civil/Structural)
Location: Derby / Glasgow / York / London Employment Type: Permanent Working Arrangement: Office / Home hybrid
About the Role
Do you want to be part of our growing Tunnels, Civils & Underground Structures discipline? Are you experienced in underground structures design and passionate about collaborating on projects domestically and internationally? Then this Principal Engineer role could mark the next exciting chapter in your career.
We thrive on designing solutions that enable a better tomorrow. Thanks to our ongoing expansion, we now have an opportunity for a Principal Engineer to join us. Working across a variety of civil and structural projects, you will guide less experienced engineers through reviews of their work while playing a pivotal role in delivering successful projects—balancing technical leadership with project management.
Your responsibilities will span multiple sectors, including major civil and structural engineering projects, requiring you to coordinate and lead multi-disciplinary teams for diverse clients. These clients may include contractors on design-and-build projects or end clients themselves.
Project teams will vary considerably: at one end, a small, single-discipline group working for a few months; at the other, multi-disciplinary teams of 20–30 engineers on projects lasting a year or more.
Key Responsibilities
- Technical oversight: Checking and assessing projects across many engineering structures
- Project delivery: Coordinating timely and budgeted completion, ensuring high technical quality and compliance with our management systems
- Team leadership: Supervising, mentoring, and developing junior engineers and technicians—maximising training opportunities in collaboration with line managers
- Global collaboration: Identifying incentives to work with remote teams across our Engineering Design Centres (including support for integration challenges)
- Client relations: Developing relationships to generate business opportunities and support bidding/tender processes alongside directing business development initiatives
- Design outputs: Producing/verifying engineering designs, reviews, calculations, reports, and other contract deliverables
- Commercial management: Overseeing financial viability and efficiency across allocated projects
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Skills & Experience
Your impact stems from your capacity to collaborate respectfully with colleagues, partners, and customers—balancing professionalism with curiosity. Critical attributes:
- Chartered status: Hold or achieve either IEng or CEng (e.g., membership of MICE/MIStuctE)
- Specialised experience: Demonstrable expertise in civil/structural infrastructure projects, with a preference for underground structures and tunnels (UK or internationally)
- Leadership: Experience leading project teams—whether acting as client’s or contractor’s designer—while managing team growth and delivery deadlines
- Mentorship: Proven skill in developing less experienced engineers through supportive, collaborative leadership
- Teamwork: Strong communication and team-coordination in diverse, multi-disciplinary environments
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Benefits and Culture
Why COWI?
At COWI, we focus on making the world more sustainable and liveable by aligning expertise with bold solutions—ushering in measures for environmental, social, and economic advancement. Our ethos centres on openness, respect, development, and belonging.
Our global presence spans Nordic territories, the UK, North America, and India, with over 7,500 professionals driving innovation across engineering, architecture, energy, and environmental sectors.
Your Compensation Package
Beyond a competitive salary, we invest deeply in professional and personal wellbeing. Our benefits include:
- 28 days holiday plus all UK bank/public holidays
- Formalised career development with yearly promotion opportunities
- Private healthcare coverage for you and immediate dependents
- Flexible hybrid working conditions
- Fully subsidised membership to two professional institutions annually
- Salary-matched group pension
- Life assurance scheme
- Cycle-to-work incentives
- Corporate gym membership
Next Steps
For further details, contact Laura Dobson, Talent Acquisition Specialist, at LADN@COWI.COM.
Explore more on our **website www.cowi.com, where we share insight into our projects, strategy, and the culture at COWI.
We are an equal opportunity employer. COWI guarantees fair hiring practices regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability. This extends across all employment terms and conditions—including recruitment, placement, promotion, and development.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills
Location