Principal Consultant/ Associate Director

Job Description Overview Do you thrive in fast-paced environments? Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and make a real impact? If so, we’d love to hear from you. We’re looking for an Associate Director to join our team who is passionate about driving positive change within client PMOs through influence, delivery excellence, and partnership. You’ll work across multiple sectors on some of the UK’s most complex, high‑profile programmes, collaborating with multi‑disciplinary teams and solving diverse client challenges. This role will allow you to work across various programmes, with the support of some of the most experienced teams across the global AtkinsRéalis business while developing your own career journey. Last year the Programme Advisory team was one of the fastest-growing business practices, driven by our success in the infrastructure market. On the back of this growth, we’re continuing to invest in our people, seeking outstanding talent to join us to join us on our growth journey. The Programme Advisory team works with our Delivery Partner clients across some of the largest and most complex programmes in the UK and beyond in the Nuclear, Aviation, Defence, Water, Power & renewables, and Transportation sectors. We pride ourselves on empowering clients through trusted collaboration and helping them solve complex challenges, transform their organisations, and build an enduring capability for the future. Maturity Assessments sit at the heart of how we operate – supporting clients as a trusted strategic advisor, utilising tools and frameworks to deliver technical excellence and high value outcomes. This is delivered through industry tools like P3M3 and AR’s bespoke internal tool – Hexagon. As we scale this offering, we are seeking an individual who has deep technical expertise to lead delivery teams, coupled with an advisory mindset to guide clients through ambiguity to high impact outcomes.

Your role

You will be accountable for the technical delivery excellence which will establish Hexagon as the go-to bespoke maturity assessment approach across priority sectors and key strategic clients. Lead the technical delivery, consistency, and evolution of the Maturity Assessment offerings (tools and capability) and wider maturity assessment service line. Acts as the technical authority across engagements, ensuring high-quality outputs, aligned methodology, and a connected SME capability network.

Methodology, Toolkit & Innovation

Maintain and enhance MA (Hexagon) frameworks, lenses, and scoring guidance. Oversee development of delivery toolkits, templates, and digital assets (e.g. Power BI, SharePoint).

Capability Network & Community of Practice

Establish and lead the Maturity Assessments Community of Practice as the focal point for delivery capability. Build and coordinate a network of internal stakeholders and SMEs aligned to Maturity Assessment themes and lenses. Enable effective SME “reach-back” and knowledge sharing to support delivery and continuous improvement.

Delivery Assurance

Provide oversight across self and full maturity assessments. Ensure consistency in scoring, evidence review, and recommendations. Support complex engagements across scoping, discovery, validation, and reporting phases.

Client Engagement

Provide senior technical input across assessments and workshops. Translate outputs into clear, prioritised improvement roadmaps. Support positioning of Hexagon / MA’s as a front-end diagnostic for wider work.

Service Growth & Innovation.

Support MA WW lead on bids and proposition development. Enhance offering through digital, benchmarking, and integration with wider advisory services. Promote use of Hexagon as a pipeline and business development enabler.

About you

Strong understanding of P3M delivery and maturity assessment frameworks (P3M3, others). Professional qualifications desirable P3M3 Assessor Accreditation. APM / MSP / PRINCE2 / MoP. Lean / Six Sigma / Change.

Role Competencies

• Technical Leadership: Leads maturity assessments using recognised frameworks and best practice methods.
• Quality Assurance: Ensures consistent, evidence-based outputs across all engagements.
• Leadership, Influence & Stakeholder Engagement: Coordinates teams and SMEs and engages stakeholders effectively.
• Collaboration: Builds internal networks to enable scalable delivery.
• Programme Lifecycle: Delivers major transformations across the full programme lifecycle.
• PMO Design & Implementation: Designs and embeds PMOs across people, process, governance, and tools.
• Analytical & Problem Solving: Analyses complex data to generate clear, insight-driven outputs.
• Change & Delivery Mindset: Drives change and delivers high-quality outcomes in complex environments.
• Communication: Translates complex findings into clear and actionable insights.

Rewards & benefits

• Enjoy competitive salaries, employee rewards and a brilliant range of benefits you can tailor to suit your own health, wellbeing, financial and lifestyle choices.
• Make the most of a myriad of opportunities for training and professional development to grow your skills and expertise.
• And combine our hybrid working culture and flexible holiday allowances to balance a great job and fulfilling personal life.

Be rewarded. Find out more.

About AtkinsRéalis

We’re AtkinsRéalis, a world-class engineering services and nuclear organization. We connect people, data and technology to transform the world's infrastructure and energy systems. Together, with our industry partners and clients, and our global team of consultants, designers, engineers and project managers, we can change the world. We're committed to leading our clients across our various end markets to engineer a better future for our planet and its people.

Additional information Security clearance

This role may require security clearance and offers of employment will be dependent on obtaining the relevant level of clearance. If this is necessary, it will be discussed with you at interview. The vetting process is delivered by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) and may require candidates to provide proof of residency in the UK of 5 years or longer. If applying to this role please do not make reference to (in conversation) or include in your application or CV, details of any current or previously held security clearance.

We are committed to creating a culture where everyone feels that they belong - a place where we can all be ourselves, thrive and develop to be the best we can be.

So, we offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements and employee resource groups to support all employees.

As an Equal Opportunities Employer, we value applications from all backgrounds, cultures and ability.

As a Disability Confident Leader, we are committed to offering an interview to all applicants who have a disability and meet the essential criteria. If you would like to be considered under this commitment, please let us know at the application stage.

Worker Type Employee Job Type Regular

At AtkinsRéalis, we seek to hire individuals with diverse characteristics, backgrounds and perspectives. We strongly believe that world-class talent makes no distinctions based on gender, ethnic or national origin, sexual identity and orientation, age, religion or disability, but enriches itself through differences.

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