Early Careers Development Lead in Reading

Are you an early careers professional ready to take the next step in a growing, forward-thinking business? This is an exciting opportunity to build on your experience, shape impactful programmes, and take on a role where you can truly make a difference. Joining a close-knit and collaborative team of 4, you will grow into an Early Careers Lead role, playing a pivotal part in developing, delivering and embedding programmes and supporting infrastructure that enables apprentices and graduates in building successful and rewarding career paths.

This role is central to the day-to-day operational delivery of our Early Careers strategy, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and high-quality outcomes across both apprentice and graduate development pathways, and ensuring regulatory compliance. You will contribute to the design, development, and management of these programmes alongside our specialist Learning and Development colleagues across the region, building strong, lasting relationships with educational institutions, training providers, industry partners, internal Subject Matter Experts, business and people leaders, and the wider HR and LOD teams.

Creating a best-in-class early careers development programme and wider offering is a strategic investment priority for the Company in recognition of the importance of this expanding headcount. The Company is committed to nurturing apprentice and graduate talent who will become Stantec’s Consultants of the future. The team is therefore currently focused on rolling out an evolved development offering, as well as redesigning the existing development offering for current cohorts into a more tailored, Stantec-led experience—introducing new and refreshed content, enhanced tools, and a greater emphasis on in-person and experiential learning.

Your role will span everything relating to supporting early career professionals throughout their lifecycle – from onboarding to the completion of the Stantec programme and apprentice academic courses and qualifications. This involves supporting the evolution of the development programme as it grows into a broader, more immersive experience, to supporting the creation of systems, infrastructure, resources and collateral, policies and processes, including pay and progression, to ensure the offering is sustainable and scalable to respond to a growing and increasingly complex early careers population.

You will support with the accountability for the governance, budgeting and delivery of EC programmes ensuring they are delivered on time, to agreed standards and at scale, through strong project management and effective delegation. You will support wider strategic initiatives such as targeted outreach, STEM, social value/mobility, ensuring we are attracting, nurturing and retaining the best talent and delivering a return on investment alongside our moral and ethical values and obligations.

You will play a key role in building and maintaining the infrastructure that underpins strategy and programme success, and lead on the delivery of communications, raising awareness and understanding to support a learning culture, learning in action and engagement. This includes educating and empowering People Leaders. You will act as a technical lead for Apprenticeships, supporting complex cases, compliance, risk and escalations and provide oversight and assurance on Apprenticeship delivery, consistency and governance.

Your Impact: In this role, you will be instrumental in shaping both the current success and future direction of our Early Careers function. Your work will ensure that our programmes not only run efficiently day to day but also evolve into a best-in-class offering that supports long-term business growth. By designing meaningful and engaging development experiences, you will help apprentices and graduates build the skills, confidence, and networks they need to thrive. At the same time, you will support People Leaders and stakeholders, enabling them to play an active role in developing emerging talent. Through your focus on consistency, quality, governance and continuous improvement, you will help create a scalable and sustainable Early Careers framework – one that strengthens our ability to attract, develop and retain top talent across Stantec.

About You: You are a passionate and experienced early career professional holding a CIPD qualification/s who enjoys balancing hands-on programme delivery with the opportunity to shape and influence strategy. You are proactive, organised, and confident working with a wide range of stakeholders, bringing both structure and creativity to your approach. You will bring:

• Experience working in a role focused on early careers and with Further Education providers, training organisations, Subject Matter Experts, and business and people leaders
• Proven experience supporting apprentices, including from a pastoral care perspective
• Strong knowledge of apprenticeship frameworks, funding structures, and levy requirements, including cross national borders
• Experience providing advice and guidance to business leaders and people leaders
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and organisational skills
• Experience of managing budgets
• A structured, strategic and commercial approach, with an ability to influence future direction
• A collaborative and hardworking approach to support the team with the high volume of work and a rapidly expanding early careers headcount
• Strong at building and maintaining relationships and working in strategic partnership with other teams and departments to provide a holistic approach to early careers (LOD, HR, Talent Acquisition, Payroll, Social Value, Technical Leads, Business Leads, Subject Matter Experts)

Most importantly, you bring a genuine passion for developing early talent, alongside the ambition to grow into a more strategic leadership role as the function continues to evolve.

Why Join Us? We put people first: We're proud of our friendly, inclusive and collaborative environment where everyone feels valued and driven to succeed. We are driven to achieve: Named in the top 50 companies to work by Glassdoor 2025. Recognised by Corporate Knights as one of the world's top 10 most sustainable companies 2025. We do what is right: Industry leading training and development as well as paid professional subscriptions. A professional progression plan, supporting you to become chartered. We are better together: A supportive and collaborative team environment and wider ERG network. Growth: We're on an exciting growth journey across the UK – we want you to be part of it! Great Benefits: Competitive salary, bonus schemes, enhanced pension plan, annual leave with the option to buy/sell additional days, private medical insurance, group income protection and life assurance standard as well as discounted gym membership and many more. Hybrid / Flexible working: Enjoy a healthy work-life balance with our hybrid approach to flexible working.

About Stantec: The Stantec community unites more than 34,000 employees working in over 450 locations across 6 continents. We have been working with our clients and communities in the UK for over 150 years. We plan, design, deliver and manage the development and infrastructure needed to support the creation of sustainable, healthy and prosperous communities. Our teams provide effective and relevant solutions, translating our clients’ vision into valued consents, deliverable plans for projects and programmes, and efficient designs for delivery based on technical excellence and deep market insights. We address today's challenges while looking to a fairer, better tomorrow, focusing on clean growth, radical changes in our economy and the needs of future communities.

Stantec provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants for future and current employment and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. We prohibit discrimination in decisions concerning recruitment, hiring, referral, promotion, compensation, fringe benefits, job training, terminations or any other condition of employment. Stantec is in compliance with laws and regulations and ensures equitable opportunities in all aspects of employment. Building an inspired, inclusive work environment that attracts, supports and develops world-class talent is crucial to our success. If you are excited by this role but worry that your experience doesn’t exactly align, we encourage you to apply. At Stantec we want you to perform your best at every stage of the recruitment process and are committed to ensuring it is accessible to all. If you need support or require adjustments, please contact careers.UK@stantec.com and we will discuss how we can assist you.