Specialist Design Engineer

We are recruiting for a Specialist Design Engineer for our Rail Infrastructure, Communication and Information Systems (CIS) business. This role is office-based, with the primary location for this role in Ashby De-La-Zouch.

Your Role and What You’ll Be Doing:

The Specialist Engineer provides technical leadership across the specification, design, and deployment of SCADA and control system solutions, setting the direction for how these systems are conceived, engineered, and delivered. You will shape architectures, define solution patterns, and champion best practice, ensuring our engineering approaches remain robust, scalable, and future-ready. In this role, you will take ownership of technically complex and first-in-type solutions—driving reuse where beneficial and creating new modular components, frameworks, and design patterns when the solution demands it. Your influence spans the full engineering lifecycle, from early concept development and bid support through detailed design, integration, verification, and delivery into service. This position is ideal for a technically authoritative, systems-focused engineer who is comfortable guiding others, solving complex engineering challenges, and remaining hands-on with the technologies that underpin modern SCADA and control systems.

What Will Be My Responsibilities?

• Leading the development and governance of system architectures, solution patterns, and reusable components across all SCADA and control system domains—ensuring approaches are scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned to business best practices.
• Acting as the technical authority for complex or first-of-type solutions, providing specialist insight into technology such as A8000 RTUs, S7/TIA architectures, SCADA (incl. WinCC OA) behaviours, interface models, and cross-system integration challenges.
• Driving engineering excellence and consistency by defining standards, frameworks, templates, and assurance methods that strengthen solution quality, promote reuse, and reduce engineering effort across projects and bids.
• Providing high-value specialist input to bids, estimates, and solution strategies, ensuring technical approaches are feasible, risk-aware, cost-effective, and reuse-aligned.
• Mentoring and guiding engineers and senior engineers, acting as the go-to expert for problem-solving, system behaviour analysis, interface definition, and engineering decision support.
• Assuring compliance with engineering governance, safety, cybersecurity, configuration, and lifecycle processes, providing clear technical direction and challenge where needed.
• Representing the business as a subject matter expert, collaborating with SMEs, customers, suppliers, and internal teams to shape solutions, resolve complex issues, and maintain technical credibility.

Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Extensive technical expertise across SCADA and control systems, including Power SCADA, Station Information/M&E supervisory systems, Tunnel Ventilation, and route-wide engineering management architectures.
• Deep hands-on knowledge of technology such as A8000 RTUs, the clients S7 PLCs, TIA Portal, and the integration of PLC/RTU-based systems with field devices, networks, and multi-system interfaces.
• Expert-level capability with SCADA platforms, ideally WinCC OA, covering system design, architecture patterns, interface models, data structures, and deployment strategies.
• Advanced systems engineering capability—requirements engineering, architecture definition, interface control, integration strategy, verification/validation, and lifecycle governance.
• Proven experience operating as a technical authority, providing design assurance, technical direction, configuration/change governance, and specialist review on complex or safety-critical systems.
• Strong background shaping and delivering reusable, scalable, maintainable system solutions, including first-of-type or novel engineering approaches.
• Degree (or equivalent) in a relevant engineering discipline, with Chartered Engineer status (or working towards it), and excellent communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills.