AECOM
Technical Director – Justice Architecture
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Technical Director – Justice Architecture
Technical Director – Justice Architecture
Change the World with AECOM
About the Role
AECOM is one of the world’s leading infrastructure consulting firms, partnering with clients to tackle the planet’s most complex challenges. With our work spanning transportation, buildings, water, energy, and the environment, we shape communities and societies worldwide.
We are seeking an outstanding leader to join our Justice Architecture team at Technical Director level, helping to shape the future of prison architecture, court design, and rehabilitative environments. This is a rare, high-impact opportunity to lead a dynamic practice across the UK & Ireland, driving projects that create real-world change.
As the Head of AECOM’s Justice Architecture, you’ll lead a team of creative professionals, delivering high-profile projects in a sector where design informed by strategy, justice, and humanity is non-negotiable. This role demands visionary leadership, a deep understanding of the MoJ/HMCTS/Home Office landscape, and the passion to influence national infrastructure and societal impact.
Join a world-class firm at a time when the justice estate is undergoing unprecedented transformation. Shape how spaces contribute to reformation, rehabilitation, and public safety, while growing a team capable of delivering bold, sustainable solutions.
Key Responsibilities
In this strategic leadership role, your focus would include (but not be limited to):
- Leading and growing AECOM’s Justice Architecture practice across the UK & Ireland, ensuring integration with wider APAC and US teams where relevant.
- Delivering and leading complex projects across justice environments:
- Prisons, secure facilities, and rehabilitative environments
- Courts, police stations, and community justice centres
- Legacy modernisations, decommissioning, and new-build programmes
- Securing highly strategic work stream including:
- HMCTS estate transformation
- Home Office secure accommodation programs
- ** Prison resettlement & decarceration initiatives**
- Client stakeholder management:
- Deep strategic engagement with Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Home Office, and HMCTS leadership.
- Ensuring alignment between client objectives, sector criteria, and architectural ambition.
- Strategic bid development – transposing our technical and design innovation into successful professional service wins.
- Innovating at pace & cost – applying documentation process efficiency, digital tools, and sustainable design across large, scope-sensitive projects.
- Director-level representation in:
- Partner-led client network meetings
- Industry forums, competitions, and thought-leadership debates on justice estates and prison reform.
- Talent empowerment:
- Mentoring architects, cost consultants, programmers, and multidisciplinary designers.
- High-performing team leadership, ensuring clarity of vision and creative energy in large, fraught projects.
- Hands-on delivery & innovation:
- Site management, presentations, and first principles-based problem-solving.
- 3D coordination, digital documentation (BIM workflows, Revit/Maya), and depot delivery approaches.
Critically, this is a sector specialist leader role – the Technical Director must operate as a confident, credible voice to internal AECOM partners while also advocating within the wider justice domain.
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Your Impact Backing Our Purpose
- Justice is more than planning it; it’s about shaping it. At AECOM, we care about freedom of expression and equity. We prioritise projects where design doesn’t just depict transformation – it drives it faster, fairer, and smarter.
- Sustainability embedded in justice. This role works across regulatory frameworks, helping decouple punishments from prisons, optimising carbon footprints, and modernising the justice estate sustainably.
- Leading by example. As AECOM’s justice sector expert, the Technical Director positions our firm as an industry opinion-former, setting new standards in prison reform and why communities & public safety must shape the fight against overcrowding.
On the Job
You’ll need exceptional street credibility in both design and delivery. You’ll be working with people whose careers span decades. We’re looking for someone who:
Core Requirements
- Proven expertise leading £20–£100M+ projects within UK prison & courts sector.
- Demonstrated success in leading projects which – even if subtly – challenge convention or reverse conventional wisdom. (Judicial criticism, architectural awards, or transformational schemes are welcome evidence.)
- Is RIBA/RLAI Chartered, able to sign off on certificate applications, and recognised professional level technical certifications in construction and procurement conventions (e.g., NEC3/4).
- Experience winning large-scale tender bids, with a portfolio of successfully delivered major justice programmes.
- Deep exposure to operational and digital tools, including:
- The AECOM workflow for complex prisons (from researched concept through whole-life linked design & digital detoxification).
- Critical examination of disposition or re-deployment phases through digital interrogation withupon existing surveillance and fire-proofing FEMA consultations.
- Capacity to influence stakeholders beyond just architects. You’ve negotiated **technical projects for supremacymoItility within the finance/compliance layer, local authorities, clinical partners and ministry leaders.
Desirable But Not Mandatory
- Awareness of irregular needs in remote/mixed-security facilities (e.g., females’ prisons, coalition centres, HIGH/MEDIUM OFFENDER ASSESSMENT programmes).
- Understanding of HEVA (Health & Safety in Custody) guidelines, the Prison Designs Team, Careers in HM milestones, and the wider ranks of advisory teams and project controls.
- Special advocacy for emotional & gender-based justice solutions, creating adaptable, flexible environments.
- Natural gift for collaborative leadership, where big-picture thinking meets authentic authority in the face of imperatives like “the toaster sample gets delivered for YES/NO breakfasts” inicester’s new prison.
Who Are We Looking For?
As lead across a voltage range of complex socio assignments, you’ll need:
Drive & Ambition
We’re looking to recruit a ** result-driven design industry leader** with momentum. You’ve successfully steered complex, high-profile projects through phases of architectural collaboration and problem-solving ahead of stakeholder demand. Consistently guided staff with varied specialisations toward a unified approach. If you gauge yourself against transformative work split, then familiarity with prison specialist professionals is a precursor.
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Emotional Intelligence & Judgement
Prisons & justice architecture are grounded in ethical decisions. Emphasis on adjudicating where “shortest net benefit for taxpayers” and “justice through design coherence” collide confidently. Intact awards, interviews with media, or public stakeholder outreach may evidence due diligence judgment – we want fairness–rooted innovators who also operate transparently.
Adaptability, With Obsession for Justice Cutting Edges
Particularly flexible in fiscal environment uncanniness; such as whether new-build nations must embrace affordable-start investments ‘Building Cells,’ or if collaboration sites should prioritise holistic design needing support from international peril-theme transfers.
Beyond design and delivery, we want a leader who identifies and attracts big, new justice estate programmes, steers novel strategies within the justice framework, and mentors future leaders to deliver those outcomes.
Benefits You’ll Enjoy
At AECOM, our mission is driven by our people. We offer a film-inspiring balance of career, quality, responsibility, and meaning. Here’s how we do it:
-
Unparalleled – Career Progression
- Work in one of the UK’s most coveted infrastructure sectors with global-facing missions.
- Join a fast-track leadership opportunity with the unique sector expertise of the justice estate in the midlands-made joint schedules.
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Flexibility for Success
- Hybrid working culture with open and transparent views of company cloud tools and collaborative connectivity.
- Access to cutting-edge digital and immersive design technology (for capturing the needs of communities recognized on custodians as well).
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Life’s Balance and Growth
- Frequent networking, mentoring, and mentoring opportunities with high-percentage 40+ cent–growth yearly & underpinned schemes lasting 5-7 in total course. Here, there’s an approachable speed to leadership as our careers exponential calendar expands.
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Compensation Packages
- Overtake industry standards in compensation in prestigious benchmark justice thresholds.
- Tax-free trusted forgivable and perks.
- Our potential leadership programmes offer you more
Each of these components are combined in our mission to ensure at AECOM your professional and personal development is always working the right direction.
More From AECOM
A portfolio of what you'd experience:
- Correctly Envision your own work contributing to impact ** Império organization structures & families govern mode Scotland with perfection**.
- Executive Mediation & Direct Lead to design teams in managing status of work and operations with law control bodies in visual/textile department.
- Receive Protection in Talent Pools within the firm. Our HighAchieve Reward Scheme making rehabilitation environment programmes possible.
- Explorce arise Access in various workshops, live projects, relationships with the sector’s leading stakeholders.
Seize the Opportunity
-lasting **sub 360 with nearby ranger authority facilities and
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