AECOM Advisory - Director (Defence) in London

At AECOM, we're delivering a better world. Whether improving your commute, keeping the lights on, providing access to clean water, or transforming skylines, our work helps people and communities thrive. We are the world's trusted infrastructure consulting firm, partnering with clients to solve the world’s most complex challenges and build legacies for future generations.

AECOM Advisory is our new management consulting Global Business Line. Created to build on AECOM’s considerable operational expertise in infrastructure design and engineering services, AECOM Advisory is a trusted adviser to senior level clients and executive teams on their most pressing enterprise and strategic needs.

We serve the full value chain of clients active in infrastructure and the built environment, including: central and local government, defence, energy, investors, transportation and water. Our UK team of 100 staff comprises business analysts, economists, commercial strategists, major programme advisors and change management practitioners. We help our clients develop their strategy, set-up major programmes for successful delivery and improve their operational performance, to generate value for their stakeholders and impact for their communities.

As a Senior Director in AECOM Advisory’s UK business, your day-to-day role will include driving business development, overseeing engagement delivery and leading practice development for the defence sector. This is a seller-doer role, and these tasks will include, but not be limited to:

• Driving industry conversations and engaging professional networks to identify and originate business development opportunities.
• Leveraging industry expertise and commercial acumen to proactively target, define and shape business development campaigns.
• Oversee all aspects of business development, for both engagements and broader campaigns, including: client outreach, proposal development, solutions architecture, commercial and pricing strategy, internal risk review, and compliance procedures.
• Oversee multiple parallel delivery teams, across various delivery models, tempos and engagement scopes.
• Provide leadership for client interactions on delivery progress and insight validation, and visibility for interactions including with C-suite clients and senior management stakeholders.
• Manage inputs from peers and technical experts to flag key delivery choices, considerations and risks as they relate to technical scope, client satisfaction, and commercial constraints.
• Architect analytical workstreams and strategically guide engagement teams.
• Provide timely quality assurance and control over scope, assumptions, analyses and insights.
• Oversee narrative formulation and highly-polished deliverable production to meet client expectations and firm standards.
• Drive practice development with conducting performance appraisals, FP&A, operational performance improvement, thought leadership and IP generation.
• Proactively coach and mentor staff.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Proven track record in a seller-doer role in a management consulting firm.
• At least 10 years of management consulting and/or related industry experience.
• Bachelor’s degree.
• Deep understanding of the defence sector and an exceptional network.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, client-service mindset and ability to act as a trusted adviser to clients.
• Create a culture of a high-tempo, high-context client-facing environment, with the ability to maintain poise, maturity and work well under pressure.
• Able to be self-directed, anticipatory and a collegial team-player who can work across a devolved-leadership and highly-matrixed consulting organization.
• Exceptional verbal communication and narrative development skills, with the ability to summarise and convey key insights to C-suite and senior management audiences.
• Exceptional commercial acumen and willingness to have an informed point-of-view, grounded in an interest in enterprise challenges (people, process, technology) and expert understanding of client industries and their context.
• Domain expertise across multiple areas: Corporate or enterprise strategy, market analysis and target operating model design; Organisational assessment, business transformation and performance improvement; Corporate finance, valuations, M&A, divestitures, divestments and privatisations; Capital projects advisory, including project finance and/or infrastructure investment appraisal, capital improvement planning, asset management, portfolio strategy; Economic development, industrial policy and market transformation.

At AECOM, we are committed to maintaining a secure and trustworthy recruitment process and take any fraudulent hiring activity seriously. To support this commitment, all newly hired employees are required to attend an in-person Day 1 onboarding at an AECOM office location as a condition of employment.

You will have the flexibility you need to do your best work with hybrid work options. Whether you’re working from an AECOM office, remote location or at a client site, you will be working in a dynamic environment where your integrity, entrepreneurial spirit and pioneering mindset are championed.

AECOM provides a wide array of compensation, benefits and well-being programs to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families. We’re the world’s trusted global infrastructure firm, and we’re in this together – your growth and success are ours too.

Join us, and you’ll get all the benefits of being a part of a global, publicly traded firm – access to industry-leading technology and thinking and transformational work with big impact and work flexibility. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person’s potential, and we’ll help you reach yours.