Southern Water
Senior AI Automation Engineer
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Closing Date: 2026-07-28
Senior Automation Engineering
Location: Durrington (with regular travel to Falmer)
Contract: Permanent, Full-time (37 hours per week) with flexible start and finish times available to support work-life balance
Hybrid: Minimum 2 days onsite
Salary: £54,600
Role Overview
We're building our Process & Intelligent Automation team and are looking for an experienced Automation Engineering Manager to lead and develop our automation capability. In this role, you'll lead a team of Automation Engineers responsible for designing, building, and optimising automation solutions using Power Platform, Copilot, RPA, and Azure technologies. You'll play a key role in shaping how automation is adopted across the business, helping teams improve processes, increase efficiency, and support wider digital transformation initiatives.
Working closely with senior stakeholders, process owners, architects, and platform specialists, you'll provide technical leadership while establishing standards, governance, and best practices to ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and sustainable. This is an exciting opportunity to join a new and evolving capability where you'll have the opportunity to influence strategy, build team capability, and make a significant impact from day one.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead, mentor, and develop a growing team of Automation Engineers.
- Define and drive the automation roadmap in line with business priorities.
- Oversee the design, development, and deployment of automation solutions using Power Platform, RPA, Azure, and Copilot technologies.
- Establish and maintain technical standards, governance frameworks, and development best practices.
- Work with stakeholders across the organisation to identify and prioritise automation opportunities.
- Ensure solutions align with security, compliance, and architectural requirements.
- Drive adoption of modern development practices including CI/CD, testing, documentation, and release management.
- Support the evaluation and introduction of emerging technologies, including AI-enabled automation.
- Provide technical guidance and leadership across complex automation and integration projects.
Essential Skills & Experience
- A minimum of 5 years' experience delivering and leading automation solutions within an enterprise environment.
- Previous experience managing, mentoring, or leading technical teams.
- Strong experience with Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Pages, and IVA.
- Experience developing automation solutions using Power Automate (Cloud & Desktop) and Copilot agents.
- Strong understanding of intelligent automation, workflow orchestration, and process optimisation.
- Ability to design and oversee integrations between business systems and platforms.
- Strong understanding of governance, security, and platform management, including DLP, RBAC, and identity management.
- Experience working within structured delivery environments using CI/CD, testing frameworks, documentation, and release processes.
- Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and influencing skills.
- Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to balance strategic thinking and technical delivery.
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Desirable Skills & Experience
- Microsoft certifications (PL-100, PL-200, PL-400).
- Azure certifications (AZ-900, AI-900, AZ-204).
- Experience with Copilot Studio and AI-enabled automation solutions.
- Knowledge of API-led and event-driven architectures.
- Experience with Alteryx or similar data and analytics tooling.
- Familiarity with enterprise systems such as ServiceNow, SAP, or GIS platforms.
- Experience leading a Centre of Excellence (CoE) or automation practice.
- Passion for emerging technology and intelligent automation.
Progression opportunities
Southern Water offers career progression, training, and development opportunities.
About Southern Water
Southern Water is at the forefront of transforming Britain’s water industry, investing significantly to enhance resilience, sustainability, and service excellence. With £7.8bn planned investment for 2025-30, this is an unparalleled opportunity to join a business committed to delivering a generational shift in the way water services are managed.
At Southern Water, we believe diverse perspectives drive innovation. If you’re passionate about making a positive impact and think you can bring value to our team, we’d love to hear from you—even if you don’t tick every box. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic. If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
Our Commitment to Diversity
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic. If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
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Additional information:
In line with Southern Water’s security requirements, successful candidates will be required to provide evidence of their identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record check (DBS) and verification of their employment and/or education history for the past three years. Appointment to this role is subject to the successful completion of all pre-employment checks, including security vetting. Please note that if a candidate does not meet the required security standards or fails to pass the vetting process, Southern Water reserves the right to withdraw the offer of employment. Some positions may also require higher levels of security vetting, which may involve providing additional documentation.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is big. Our impact is huge. And we know that every single one of us has the power, through our actions, to positively change society and the environment for good. It’s why careers with us have real meaning. Because, if you’re driven and ambitious, we can offer you huge opportunities for personal growth, professional development and constant innovation. Forever evolving. Forever focused on doing the right thing, we empower and encourage everyone to play to their strengths and to help us shape a fair and positive future for all. We believe in Water for Life. If you do too, Dive Right In.
Our Customers
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support – because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That’s why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you’ll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.
Flexible Working
Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?
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