Technical Director - Development Planning in Manchester

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. We are more than 34,000 people, in over 30 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

We are recruiting a Technical Director specialising in Development and Transport Planning to help clients secure funding and approvals of infrastructure requirements. The role will support a small team that shapes robust, evidence‑led strategies that stand up to scrutiny, build stakeholder confidence, and accelerate decision‑making. Our work spans Home England, local and combined authorities, sub‑regional transport bodies and private developers. Experience in shaping New Towns and spatial development strategies would be preferential.

You will work closely with our wider placemaking offer (including business transformation, buildings, environment and local government) to bring integrated advice—linking transport, place, sustainability and deliverability into a single, coherent case for investment.

Role accountabilities:

• Help clients make confident, transparent decisions by providing masterplanning input that integrates transport, land use and deliverability.
• Planning application support to secure consent, with clear evidence and audit trails.
• Public consultation support and expert witness services where required.
• Local Plan evidence and advice to support sound, deliverable growth strategies.
• Future mobility strategies that are deliverable, affordable and evidence‑led.
• Support to secure funding and approvals, building stakeholder confidence in the evidence.
• Create an environment and expectations for consistent high quality service delivery with a focus on exceeding client expectations and leads to repeat business.
• Optimise use of Global Excellence Centres (GEC), based outside of the UK&I, and develop other methods of improving project margins and increasing efficiency of delivery.

The team operates across the United Kingdom, with offices in the South East, Midlands, North and South West of England, as well as Wales and Scotland. You will provide direction to delivery teams and work with clients on existing and upcoming commissions. This is a strong opportunity to grow a client portfolio and help shape the wider Arcadis placemaking offer—working across internal specialist teams to bring the right capability to each client challenge.

You should be experienced in helping clients (public and private sector) to secure consent - providing clear, evidence‑led deliverables that stand up to scrutiny. You will lead client engagements end‑to‑end: shaping our support and delivering client excellence.

Educated to degree level (or above), preferably in transport planning or traffic engineering, with experience leading or working within a relevant business function within a multinational engineering or professional services firm or public sector organisation. You will be confident presenting to clients and stakeholders and able to communicate complex evidence clearly and concisely. You will bring a rounded transport planning skill set, together with strong experience in business case development and the practical application of economic appraisal tools and guidance.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Proven experience shaping a development planning business that meets governance and assurance expectations.
• Ability to build trusted client relationships and act as a senior point of contact.
• Experience leading delivery teams and managing programmes to time, cost and quality.
• Strong technical assurance capability—reviewing and signing off key client deliverables.
• Commitment to coaching and developing teams to deliver consistently high‑quality work.
• Excellent report writing and communication skills, with the ability to tailor messages to different audiences.
• Strong organisation and prioritisation skills across multiple client commissions and bids.

We can only achieve our goals when everyone is empowered to be their best. We believe everyone's contribution matters. It’s why we are pioneering a skills-based approach, where you can harness your unique experience and expertise to carve your career path and maximize the impact we can make together. You’ll do meaningful work, and no matter what role, you’ll be helping to deliver sustainable solutions for a more prosperous planet. Make your mark, on your career, your colleagues, your clients, your life and the world around you. Together, we can create a lasting legacy.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging: We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people. We believe that by working together diverse people with different experiences develop the most innovative ideas. Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of how we improve quality of life and we work closely with our people across six ED&I Workstreams: Age, Disability, Faith, Gender, LGBT+ and Race. A diverse and skilled workforce is essential to our success.