General Manager in Guildford

An exciting opportunity to join us as a General Manager.

Location: West Sussex

Working Days: Monday to Friday - 37.5 hours per week (or hours to suit the business)

A quick look at the role: The General Manager will lead and develop the safe, efficient and profitable operation of a long term PFI contract, overseeing a diverse and high-performing service that includes a number of Transfer Stations and Household Waste Recycling Centres, a Materials Recycling Facility and a Transport Team, with a total workforce of approximately 220 employees. The successful candidate will focus on maximising productivity, continuously improving health and safety standards, and driving employee engagement, plant performance and increased recycling and diversion from landfill.

Your core responsibilities:

• To establish and maintain a strong health, safety and wellbeing culture that delivers continuous improvement. Set achievable targets and monitor progress including the implementation of all company policies and standards.
• To create, and implement an annual budget and fiscal plan, along with an agreed set of deliverables and objectives for the contract. Monitor and control business unit performance against budget and financial targets and implement tight cost control and identify synergy savings as part of margin improvement.
• Improve the culture for Environmental Awareness in all aspects of site operations. Monitor compliance and develop achievable targets for improvement including communication of these effectively to the team.
• To lead, develop, motivate, and maintain an effective management team and ensuring a positive, inclusive work environment. To create a culture of support for operations, maintenance, projects, technical and administration that drives the achievement of business targets and plans.
• Building an environment for people development and ensuring that such development is appropriately supported and facilitated to demonstrate clear opportunities for succession.
• To lead, drive and improve employee engagement and morale in line within the business requirements and employee survey feedback.
• To develop and implement new technologies, processes, and business types in order to enhance contract performance, reduce costs and improve safety standards.
• To develop strong relationships with the client and associated regional authorities to ensure collaboration, effective change management and compliant operations.
• Lead specific strategic groups as required and carry out any other such reasonable job-related tasks as the company may require you to undertake from time to time.

Essential requirements for the General Manager role:

• Degree in Engineering, Scientific or Management / Finance discipline.
• Experience managing a PFI contract or similar, preferably within a local authority setting.
• Management of capital and operational budgets.
• Extensive industry experience in technical and operational management roles.
• Understand relevant industry, transport and health & safety legislation.

And Here’s why you’ll love it at Biffa:

• Competitive salary.
• Employee life cover.
• Ongoing career development, training and coaching – because if you don’t grow, we don’t grow.
• Generous pension scheme.
• Retail and leisure discounts.
• Holiday and travel discounts.
• Bike to work scheme.

Interview Date: Monday 26th January 2026.

Biffa – we’re changing the way people think about waste. At Biffa, we love working with waste. Whether we’re turning it into sustainable power, finding new ways to recycle it or simply keeping it off the streets, we believe every day is an opportunity to improve the lives of millions. It’s a view that’s shared by our 11,000+ people around the country, who trust us to provide them with a career that’s always rewarding, often challenging, but never dull. We believe different ideas, perspective and backgrounds are key to developing a creative and effective working environment which is why you’ll find us championing diversity and equality at every turn.