Water Domain and Solutions Lead

Role: Water Domain and Solutions Lead

Location: Anywhere in the UK (The candidate must be willing to travel to client sites in Exeter, Devon (EX2 7HR) & North of England or the Midlands—particularly Leeds, Manchester, or Birmingham) – Travel expenses will be reimbursed

Is it Permanent / Contract: Contract (6 months initially)

Is it Onsite/Remote/Hybrid: Hybrid

Start Date: Only Immediate Joiners or candidates with max 2 weeks’ notice.

About the role

Client is growing its UK utilities business, anchored in water. We deliver cloud, data, application

and IT operations programmes for water companies and are pursuing further data platform, AI and IT

operations opportunities across the sector. We are now investing in a senior practitioner who has spent

the last decade delivering technology programmes into UK water companies from an IT services or

systems integration background.

You will be the water and utilities domain authority across our bids, solutions and client conversations.

You will read a tender response and know whether a water company's IT and procurement evaluators

will believe it. You will work with our Data and AI, Digital and Software, Cloud and Infrastructure, Digital

IT Operations and Enterprise Platform teams to shape their capability around the problems a water

company CIO, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Head of Data or Head of IT Operations actually has.

And you will sit in front of those clients as someone who has delivered their kind of programme before.

This is a delivery practitioner role for someone from the IT services industry. It is not a water company

operations role and not a management consulting role.

What you will do

Solution contextualisation

• Work with Client service lines to shape offerings around water use cases: leakage and

pressure analytics, pollution and storm overflow monitoring, asset health modelling, capital

programme systems, customer contact and billing, regulatory reporting, and IT operations for a

24x7 operational estate.

• Own the water application landscape view (EAM, work and field management, GIS, telemetry and

SCADA, hydraulic modelling, billing and CRM, data platforms), how these integrate, and where

the sector's data and integration pain points sit.

• Act as the domain authority in solution reviews and translate regulatory change (PR24, the single

integrated regulator, asset management maturity, AMP9) into technology implications.

Client engagement and delivery

• Lead discovery workshops and executive conversations with water company technology leaders

and programme directors.

• Join delivery engagements as the water domain lead, providing sector assurance to solution

architects, data engineers, programme managers and offshore teams.

• Bring an insider's view of how water company IT functions buy, govern and measure suppliers,

including framework procurement and the AMP investment cycle.

Practice building

• Develop Clients water points of view, thought leadership and presence at sector events such

as DigiGov, Utility Week Live, Institute of Water and British Water.

• Build reusable water assets (use-case library, landscape maps, regulatory calendar, win themes)

and upskill UK account and offshore delivery teams on water sector fundamentals.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Ten or more years in an IT services or systems integration company (for example

Accenture, Capgemini, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, IBM, Atos/Eviden, CGI, Kainos, Sopra

Steria, DXC), with the majority of that time delivering to UK water companies or UK utilities with

substantial water exposure.

• Hands-on delivery accountability as a programme manager, delivery lead, engagement

manager, solution architect or domain consultant on at least two of: data platform and analytics;

enterprise asset management (Maximo, SAP or Ellipse); customer, billing and CRM; GIS and

mobile workforce; cloud migration and IT operations; integration and application modernisation.

• Water sector fluency. Working knowledge of the price review and AMP cycle, performance

commitments and outcome delivery incentives, C-MeX, the roles of Ofwat, the Environment

Agency and the DWI, and the move to a single integrated regulator, and what these mean for a

water company's technology priorities and investment timing.

• Knows the audience. Has worked directly with water company CIOs, Heads of Enterprise

Architecture, Heads of Data, IT Operations leaders and IT procurement, and understands how

they evaluate and govern suppliers.

• Bid experience from the supplier side. Has authored, reviewed or led responses to water or

utilities technology tenders and can point to outcomes.

• Clear writing and confident challenge. Writes crisply in UK English and is willing to challenge a

solution design or a client assumption, constructively.

• Willing to travel to client sites across England, and occasionally Scotland and Wales.

Desirable

• Time spent inside a water company IT or digital function as an embedded architect, programme

lead or secondee.

• Experience on major water transformation programmes such as billing replacement, EAM

consolidation, smart metering or data platform build.

• Exposure to energy networks (RIIO), the non-household water retail market (MOSL)

• TOGAF, SAFe, MSP or equivalent delivery and architecture credentials.