Peatland Restoration Specialist in Wales

The role involves demanding fieldwork, working outside, and the reward of seeing real change take shape. As a Peatland Restoration Specialist in the National Peatland Action Programme (NPAP), you will spend time in some of Wales's wildest landscapes - often wet, often muddy, and always rewarding. You will be restoring peatlands that are vital for climate resilience, biodiversity, and water management.

You will take projects from concept to completion, developing technical specifications, securing consents, managing budgets, and overseeing contractors to ensure high-quality delivery. Your work will involve mapping, surveying, and designing restoration interventions across both NRW-managed land and privately owned sites, while providing expert advice to colleagues, partners, landowners, and stakeholders. You will also contribute to monitoring, reporting, and knowledge-sharing as NPAP continues to expand, building a rolling portfolio of projects at different stages of progress.

This is hands-on, boots-on-the-ground conservation - demanding, varied, and deeply impactful, your chance to play a key role in tackling the climate and nature emergencies while working with a passionate team across some of Wales's most precious landscapes.

As an organisation, we support flexible working. You will be contracted to the nearest NRW office to your home and a suitable hybrid working pattern will be agreed on appointment. Travel to various offices and frequently to remote locations inaccessible without the ability to drive is required, so a full and current driving licence is essential.

What you will do:

• Lead and co-ordinate specialist technical advice and guidance from a range of sources; ensure that decisions are based on sound technical judgement, in line with current legislation and best practice.
• Work with other project team members, other NRW staff and external stakeholders, to plan and develop the detailed programme of site restoration, assessing the technical requirement for a wide range of restoration projects and produce technical specifications to be followed by contractors.
• Work with the Peatlands Programme Procurement & Grants Officer post to tender and let projects in a timely manner and in full accordance with NRW Policies and Procedures.
• Undertake field-based supervision of contractors, ensuring liaison with owner/occupiers, other NRW staff and partners' staff.
• Ensure that all necessary consents for project delivery works are in place, including (where relevant) European Protected Species Consents, SSSI consents, Ordinary Water Course Consents, Flood Risk Approvals and Planning consents.
• Develop and manage multiple and overlapping contracts covering all aspects of the project, ensuring that project specifications and project delivery are consistent and compliant with NRW Health and Safety and project delivery policy, including adherence to Construction Design and Management regulations where relevant.
• Support other NRW staff in designing, procuring and managing restoration contracts in cases where these staff are leading on project delivery.
• Maintain detailed records of progress with programme implementation to support reporting. Present and share results and learning via written reports and other methods.
• Contribute to regular progress reports and updates led by the Programme Manager.
• With the support of other NRW and partner staff, produce a standardised project assessment and monitoring proforma and implement it/promote its use by others to ensure all projects benefit from a standardised baseline assessment.
• Attend and actively contribute to regular meetings of the team and support the Team Leader at Project Board and Steering Group meetings.
• Manage the budget allocated to project elements you are responsible for and maintain relationships with third party suppliers to meet value for money and spend profile requirements.
• Support project delivery by partners engaged through the NRW funding Mechanisms, including the provision of technical and logistical support and scrutiny of proposed approaches to ensure optimal restoration outcomes.
• Work with Environment and Land Management Team staff, tenants and Landowners to help deliver Management Agreements.
• Undertake health and safety duties and responsibilities appropriate to the post.
• Be committed to Natural Resources Wales Equal Opportunities and Diversity Policy, together with an understanding of how it operates within the responsibilities of the post.
• Be committed to your own development through the effective use of your personal development plan (known as Sgwrs).
• Required to take part in incident response activities.
• Any other reasonable duties requested commensurate with the grade of this role.

Your qualifications, experience, knowledge and skills:

• A degree in a relevant subject or significant experience in the discipline.
• Membership of a professional body, or working towards.
• Detailed knowledge of the conservation of peatland ecosystems with experience of assessing site condition and restoration requirements.
• Excellent report writing skills, and experience of using GIS systems to plan and record project activities.
• Knowledge and experience of implementing relevant Welsh, UK and EU legislation and consenting requirements associated with working on protected sites.
• Experience of developing, procuring and field-managing large scale, complex groundworks restoration projects including the production of technical specifications, contractor management and the use of relevant health and safety regulations.
• Expertise in work planning, budgeting and contract management.
• Experience of effective communications with a wide range of partners, ranging from individual land managers/owners and occupiers through to key strategic partners.
• Ability to work collaboratively with others and also independently with high standards of governance, demonstrating personal initiative and good organisational skills.
• A full and current UK driving license.
• Welsh Language level requirements: Essential: Level B1 - Intermediate Level. If you do not meet the Welsh language level requirements for this role your application will not be shortlisted.

Additional information:

• Successful applicants will be subject to a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service Check (DBS) check.
• Appointments are normally made within 4 to 8 weeks of the closing date.
• This role meets the criteria for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker visa route. Natural Resources Wales welcomes applications from non-UK citizens who are eligible to apply under this route, subject to confirmation by the Home Office.
• Please note that while we may be able to support the Certificate of Sponsorship required for a visa application, the organisation does not cover the cost of the visa itself, including any associated fees for dependants.
• The applicant must still meet the UK Skilled Worker Visa Eligibility and Requirement.

Benefits:

• This role will offer a range of benefits, including Civil Service Pension Scheme offering employer contributions of 28.97% (successful internal staff will remain in their current pension scheme).
• 28 days annual leave, rising to 33 days.
• Generous leave entitlements for all your life needs.
• Commitment to professional development.
• Health and wellbeing benefits and support.
• Weekly wellbeing hour to use as you choose.

We are passionate about creating a diverse workforce and positively encourage applications from under-represented communities. We embrace equality of opportunity irrespective of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. We are committed to equal opportunities, and we guarantee interviews for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

We want to attract and retain talented and highly skilled staff, so we make sure that our pay scales remain competitive. We advertise the full pay scale on our job descriptions. Appointed candidates start at the first point of the pay scale and annual increments are paid each year.

Unless otherwise stated in the 'Role' section of this advert, Natural Resources Wales is unable to offer visa sponsorship for this position. Although we hold a Skilled Worker visa sponsorship licence, it applies only to specific roles that meet both the eligibility criteria and salary requirements set out by the UK Government under the Skilled Worker visa route.

We want our staff to grow professionally and personally. From leadership development to access to further and higher education courses, our staff have opportunities to expand their knowledge on a variety of topics, stay current in their field and continue to learn as their career progresses.

We are a Bilingual organisation which complies with the Welsh Language Standards. Welsh language skills are considered an asset to NRW, and we encourage and support staff to learn, develop and use their Welsh language skills.