Principal Consultant

Our consulting teams will be typically working on either an intense diagnostic or on multi-year, multi-million-pound transformation programmes with the guarantee of a delivery outcome to our clients. It is crucial that we understand the client fully to identify the biggest opportunity for improvement, design the right solutions and work hand-in-hand with the client to implement these in a way that is sustainable. We work where our client works which can often mean working away from home during the week.

As a Principal Consultant in Newton, you will be leading your client and team through complex delivery transformation with accountability for delivering a significant value to the client which could be ~£5m. You will be typically managing a team of multi-disciplined consultants across multiple workstreams. You will have been building your presence as a leader in your current organisation, putting significant effort into developing your team and starting to develop your business development skills through things like spotting opportunities for future work.

The role is incredibly varied but would typically cover, but not be limited to:

• Managing a larger team (up to 8) including matrix management, designing the workstreams (alongside your line manager) that your Lead Consultants and below will deliver.
• Leading senior clients and sponsors on a journey, seeking to assure them of project progress and achieving full client satisfaction.
• Leading on programme governance including reporting, risk/issue/decision management and stakeholder engagement including managing upwards and escalating risks.
• Starting to own part of an account plan and working with other programme leads to define outcomes for connected workstreams as a part of a wider programme.
• Steering your team on the analysis and modelling that needs to happen to identify and/or deliver the opportunity and leading them to create a compelling data-driven narrative at a programme and organisation-wide level and then supporting them with presenting this to the senior client.
• Proactively leaning in to develop your teams, considering their long-term career aspirations and development goals and how you can best support them.
• Proactively identifying how your project team can contribute to wider market and account engagement activities and progressing this ‘side of desk’ in support of your account leadership team.

Successful recruitment will see you hired into one of our Clusters: Defence & Infrastructure, Public or Consumer. During your onboarding that chosen cluster will commit to scheduling you into the right client programmes with the right support to adapt to Newton’s core approach to programme delivery. Once you are fully onboarded there will be opportunities to work more broadly across our other clusters in line with business needs.

A Principal Consultant in Newton is likely to be a top end Manager or early Senior Manager in another consulting firm (or equivalent titles), leading a large part of a programme or having overall delivery responsibility of a small client engagement. We will be looking for demonstrable experience in delivering multiple operational transformation and improvement projects which have delivered tangible, measurable outcomes across any of the following markets:

• Defence
• Infrastructure (mining & minerals, energy generation/transmission/distribution, water, transport)
• Retail
• Manufacturing
• Branded consumer goods
• Local government
• Central government
• Health & integration

It is crucial to have the following skills and attributes to be successful in this role:

• Managing teams of consultants of various levels, capability areas and across different workstreams.
• Building and maintaining trusted relationships with senior managers, heads of function or programme, with competence and confidence to present in front of client executives.
• Purpose led analysis skills and ability to use logic to solve a problem.
• Ability to compellingly present assessment and programme outputs to enable successful progression of next steps.
• Running day to day internal and client facing governance.
• Resilience in solving highly complex problems.
• Collaborative nature, working with internal and external teams to get to the best outcome together.
• Proven track record for driving improvement or impact with an outcome focussed mindset.
• Big picture thinking and the ability to connect the dots using relevant market themes.
• Starting to think more commercially by spotting potential opportunities and understanding and communicating potential risks.
• Willingness for self-development and commitment to supporting the development of others around you; actively seeks and gives feedback.
• Ambitious and driven; always strives for the best outcomes for self and others.
• Flexible and willing to work away from home.

In order to support a great degree of flexibility in resourcing across our programmes, we are also ideally looking for individuals to already hold security clearance or be eligible to attain this prior to joining with support from Newton through that process. This is however not essential so please do still apply even if you don’t have this.

Supporting you starts from day one. New joiners often highlight the Newton energy and support they first encounter in the recruitment process and that continues through into their time at Newton. Once in role, you’ll get support from several sources – from stretching projects, on-the-job feedback and developmental guidance from Directors and Partners. You’ll have a dedicated and consistent Sponsor/Development Manager to support your career progression with promotions at Newton happening throughout the year and based on performance and readiness to perform and succeed at the next level. You’ll receive regular appraisals and annual pay reviews. We offer a highly competitive salary, standardised sign-on bonus and our generous benefits package includes car allowance, life assurance, income protection, pension contributions and 29 days holiday (not including bank holidays). We also operate profit share and equity schemes so that our people share in the success of the business. The profit share bonus is based on company performance and typically paid out in March and September. Joining us also brings many social benefits. We have a full social calendar with Spring activity days, Christmas events, a 2-day Summer event and 4 Newton-sponsored weekends a year.