Project Manager in Shoreham-by-Sea

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world. Ricardo, member of WSP, is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Project Manager to lead the successful delivery of New Product Introduction (NPI) and consultancy projects within Ricardo’s Performance Products business. Reporting to the Senior Programme Manager, you will be accountable for the end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-disciplinary projects from concept through development, validation, and transition to production. You will work closely with technical specialists, functional leaders, and customers to ensure projects are delivered safely, on time, within budget, and to the highest quality standards. This is an opportunity to manage project teams of industry-recognised experts, delivering world-class engineering solutions in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and coordinate the end-to-end delivery of complex, multi-disciplinary engineering projects.
• Take full accountability for project performance against time, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction targets.
• Manage project scope, schedules, resources, and dependencies using best-practice tools and methodologies.
• Apply robust risk and issue management, ensuring timely identification, escalation, and resolution.
• Ensure compliance with Ricardo’s project management processes and reporting requirements.
• Monitor performance and adjust plans based on data-driven analysis.
• Act as the primary project-level customer and stakeholder interface, building strong relationships at all levels.
• Manage expectations and resolve commercial or delivery issues professionally.
• Provide accurate reporting and escalation to the Senior Leadership Team.
• Control project spend against budgets and maintain accurate forecasts.
• Support preparation of customer proposals.
• Protect Ricardo’s commercial interests through effective contract and change management.
• Ensure effective transition from development to production, confirming production readiness through validation, launch governance, cross-functional alignment, and adherence to APQP and PPAP.
• Coach and mentor junior team members.
• Contribute to the Ricardo project management community and best-practice development.

Key Competencies and Experience

• Proven experience delivering complex engineering projects within an NPI or consultancy environment.
• Strong leadership and communication skills in a matrix organisation.
• Experience managing demanding customer relationships.
• A strong customer focus, with the flexibility and resilience required to succeed in a fast-paced delivery environment.
• Understanding of technical and commercial project execution.
• High IT literacy including MS Project.
• Familiarity with best-practice PM methodologies; ideally APM qualified.
• A demonstrable commitment to continuous improvement.
• Comfortable with travel within the UK and internationally will be required.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place. We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core of our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health. Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date. Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.