Operations Engineer (Flood Risk)

The role
Join Natural Resources Wales as an Operations Engineer and play a key role in delivering sustainable, safety-first engineering solutions that protect communities and the environment.
As part of our North East Integrated Engineering team, you\’ll take the lead on planning and delivering flood risk maintenance, capital improvement works, and innovative infrastructure projects. From day one, you\’ll be at the heart of designing, procuring, and managing civil engineering schemes that make a real impact.
You\’ll act as a project manager, technical advisor, and health & safety lead-supporting incident response efforts, mentoring junior team members, and collaborating with contractors and partners to ensure successful project delivery. Your work will directly contribute to improving infrastructure resilience and achieving our sustainable management goals.
We\’re looking for someone with a solid civil engineering background-ideally degree-qualified or holding an HND/HNC with significant experience. A strong understanding of CDM regulations is essential, as you\’ll help deliver our annual maintenance programme as Principal Designer and support Client duties. Project management skills (Prince2 desirable), a collaborative mindset, and experience managing budgets and technical systems will set you up for success.
This is more than an engineering role-it\’s an opportunity to help shape the future of climate adaptation and resilience in Wales.
As an organisation we support flexible working. You will be contracted to the NRW office at the location above and a suitable hybrid working pattern will be agreed on appointment. Any regular face to face meetings or training will be planned in advance. A full UK driving licence is essential.
You will have excellent communication skills and the ability to make decisions on complex matters and convey these decisions to our internal and external customers and stakeholders. If you\’re passionate about delivering engineering solutions that support communities and the environment, and want to be part of a forward-thinking design team within a great organisation, we\’d love to hear from you.
As an organisation we support flexible working. You will be contracted to the NRW office at the above location and a suitable hybrid working pattern will be agreed on appointment. Any regular face to face meetings or training will be planned in advance.
For informal enquiries, please contact Craig Davies who is the Team Leader for the North East Integrated Engineering team –
Interviews will be face to face (details of time and location will be shared in advance)
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.
About us
Natural Resources Wales is the principal environmental body in Wales, working to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources for the benefit of people, the environment, and the economy. We play a central role in protecting communities, enhancing biodiversity, and responding to the impacts of climate change.
This role sits within our Operations Directorate in North East Wales, specifically in the Integrated Engineering team. Our team is responsible for the technical planning and delivery of maintenance and improvements to flood defence assets, ensuring they perform effectively when communities need them most. We work closely with incident response teams, asset management staff, contractors, and stakeholders to keep people safe and reduce the risk of flooding.
Our directorate focuses on delivering local environmental outcomes and services that align with NRW\’s corporate priorities – including climate resilience, biodiversity enhancement, and community protection. Within this, our team ensures that flood risk assets are maintained, improved, and operated efficiently and safely.
This vacancy is critical in supporting these goals. As an Operations Engineer, you will help deliver asset management programmes, plan flood response activities, and support small-scale capital improvement projects. Your technical expertise will contribute directly to NRW\’s ability to manage flood risk, respond to incidents, and meet national and local targets for environmental resilience and public safety.
What you will do

• Responsible for the production of the annual flood risk asset maintenance programme.
• Lead on the risk management planning for the work.
• Production and review of flood incident response and contingency plans/ manuals and planning incident response exercises.
• Develop procedures for the operation of assets during a flood incident.
• Lead on the scoping, justification, costing and delivery of discreet asset improvement projects.
• Have indirect budget responsibility for both revenue and capital projects.
• In partnership with Procurement deliver framework services and product supplies.
• Carry out contractor supervision and management.
• Liaise with stakeholders including; local authorities, land owners, environmental groups, delivering a customer focus.
• 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 developmentthrough the effective use of your personal development plan (known as Sgwrs).
• Any other reasonable duties requested commensurate with the grade of this role.
• Required to take part in incident response activities

Your qualifications, experience, knowledge and skills
In your application and interview you will be asked to demonstrate the following skills and experience using the STAR method .

Welsh Language Level requirements:

• Essential: A1 – Entry level

Welsh language levels
Please note if you do not meet the level A1 requirement i.e., ability to understand basic phrases and ability to pronounce Welsh names correctly, then NRW offers a variety of learning options and staff support to help you meet these minimal requirements during the course of your employment with us.
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

See full details for all the employee benefits you will receive.
Please keep reading
We\’re 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.
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 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.
You are welcome to apply for any vacancy in Welsh or English and any application submitted will be treated equally. Applications are welcome from individuals who work part time, as part of a job share or who work full time.

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