Senior Digital Water Delivery Lead

Arup’s purpose, shared values and collaborative approach has set us apart for over 80 years, guiding how we shape a better world.

The Opportunity

Arup is a global collective of designers, engineers, consultants, and sustainability specialists working across every aspect of the built and natural environment. Our purpose is to shape a better world – creating safe, resilient, and regenerative places for current and future generations. Water is one of Arup’s Accelerator businesses, reflecting both the scale of global challenges and the opportunity to deliver transformative impact. The Arup Strategy 2025–30 identifies Water as a sector with significant growth potential, where digital innovation, sustainability, and operational excellence are central to our ambitions. As part of the UKIMEA Digital Services portfolio, the Digital Water business is at the forefront of delivering smart, resilient, and sustainable water solutions. We are committed to helping clients address complex water challenges – ranging from climate resilience and urbanisation pressures to digital transformation and operational efficiency.

We are seeking an Associate Digital Water Consultant who will act as a senior member of Arup’s Digital Water team, with responsibility for operations, work winning, cross-business collaboration, and the delivery of innovative digital solutions. This role is pivotal in driving digital transformation, managing delivery, and supporting the strategic growth of our digital water business across UKIMEA & Europe.

Role & responsibilities

• Strategy & Operations
  • Contribute to business planning, strategy development and delivery
  • Operationalise the delivery of external facing digital services for Digital Water business
  • Act as the integrator translating water business problems into digital solutions/services
  • Operate a clear engagement and integration plan for the water business to access DSP expertise.
  • Provide rapid response project resourcing plans and a catalogue of standard service offerings.
  • Embed Total Design ways of working with the water business ensuring the right blend of Water domain expertise and DSP capabilities.
  • Orchestrate the virtual Digital Water team and maintain an active water community across DSP disciplines.
• Project Delivery
  • Engage closely with clients, managing expectations, building trust, providing clear reporting, and shaping delivery to their operational and regulatory context.
  • Lead end‑to‑end delivery of Digital Water projects, products and services, spanning technical, advisory and strategic workstreams, ensuring outcomes align with client expectations and Arup performance and quality standards.
  • Form and manage multidisciplinary teams (water + digital), setting clear scopes, roles and delivery plans to enable seamless integrated delivery supporting our strategic objectives.
  • Drive high‑quality technical delivery, overseeing technical outputs, facilitating design reviews, and ensuring alignment with both Water business requirements and digital best practice.
  • Own contractual and commercial performance, including budget management, forecasting, change control, risk management and delivery assurance throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Act as the primary integrator between Water SMEs and DSP disciplines, translating water‑sector problems into coherent digital services & solutions.
• Work Winning & Market Development
  • Build strategic client and partner relationships.
  • Partner with Business and Market Leads and CRMs to share intelligence and insights and contribute to market positioning and the development of new service offerings.
  • Identify market opportunities, build opportunity roadmaps and develop project pipeline.
  • Take opportunities surfaced by Business & Market Leads and drive bid/no bid decisions within agreed service levels & mobilise the right pursuit teams.
  • Lead bids, shape the value proposition and coordinate inputs across DSP and the Water business to produce compelling, compliant bid proposals and opportunity development.
  • Improve opportunity pipeline hygiene, keep CRM stages current and unblock approvals to move qualified opportunities to proposal within target cycle times.
  • Deliver year on year improvements in ‘Lead→Opportunity→Win’ rates; track % of Digital Water bids and the value of digital work won against DSP market plan goals.

This a key role in a dynamic and growing team. You will need to be comfortable with all elements of project development and delivery and able to work flexibly to get the job required done. Sometimes you will be leading a multi-disciplinary team; on other occasions you may lead the delivery of smaller projects for clients. You will need to be comfortable jumping between topics and be able to work with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. Your capabilities will include ability to clearly define problem statements, deep technical knowledge of water engineering and digital technologies, confidence in communication and presentation and a self-starting attitude to work. Importantly you will be expected to input into shaping the future of the team and be a key representative of what Digital Water is at Arup.

At Arup, you belong to an extraordinary collective – in which we encourage individuality to thrive. Our strength comes from how we respect, share and connect our diverse experiences, perspectives and ideas. You will have the opportunity do socially useful work that has meaning – to Arup, to your career, to our members and to the clients and communities we serve.

Is this role right for you?

We’re looking for candidates who can demonstrate the following:

Required experience:

• Significant experience working in the water sector.
• Proven experience delivering major digital projects in the water sector.
• Track record of work winning within relevant sector.
• Strong understanding of the UK water industry (stakeholders, regulatory environment, etc).
• Strong knowledge of digital tools and emerging technologies (e.g. AI/ML, digital platforms, digital twins, blockchain) and understanding of how they can be applied in the water sector.
• Experience managing multidisciplinary teams and coordinating across geographies.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience in building and managing strategic relationships with partners and collaborators.
• Strong ability to bridge technical and business perspectives.
• Proven experience contributing to business strategy development.
• Proven experience managing business operations and contributing to operational strategy.
• Commitment to sustainability and the role of digital technologies in addressing global water challenges.
• Degree in relevant subject area (e.g. engineering, technology, data science).
• Accreditation with relevant professional body or institution (e.g. ICE, IET).
• Experience in agile delivery approaches and an agile mindset.
• Experience delivering digital services in line with GDS (from discovery to live).
• Experience delivering innovation projects in the water sector (e.g. FCRIP, Ofwat).

Skills & attributes:

• Operational leadership. Ability to connect businesses, shape strategy, and deliver operational change.
• Work winning. Proven work winning skills, with experience shaping proposals and securing new opportunities.
• Agile mindset. Skilled in agile methods and able to embed iterative, collaborative delivery approaches.
• Partnership building. Proven ability to develop and manage relationships with strategic partners and collaborators.
• Technical expertise. Advanced knowledge of digital tools and technologies relevant to the water sector.
• Strategic thinking. Ability to identify opportunities to integrate digital into the water business and contribute to strategy development.
• Innovation mindset. Curiosity and creativity to bring new ideas into practice and support clients in adopting emerging technologies.
• Leadership & mentoring. Capable of leading teams and supporting the growth of colleagues across all levels.

What we offer you

At Arup, we care about each member’s success, so we can grow together. Guided by our values, we provide an attractive total reward package that recognises the contribution of each of our members to our shared success. As well as competitive, fair and equitable pay, we offer a career in which all of our members can belong, grow and thrive – through benefits that support health and wellbeing, a wide range of learning opportunities and many possibilities to have an impact through the work they do. We are owned in trust on behalf of our members, giving us the freedom, with personal responsibility, to set our own direction and choose work that aligns with our purpose and adds to Arup’s legacy. Our members collaborate on ambitious projects to deliver remarkable outcomes for our clients and communities. Profit Share is a key part of our reward, enabling members to share in the results of our collective efforts. We also provide Private medical insurance, Life assurance, Accident insurance and Income protection cover. In addition, you’ll have access to flexible benefits to help you look after all aspects of your wellbeing and give you the freedom and flexibility to find the best solutions for you, your family, and your individual needs.