Senior Fire Engineer

There's a particular kind of fatigue that sets in around year six or seven of consultancy life. You've written the strategy. You've defended it through three rounds of comment. You've sat in the design team meeting where everyone nodded. And then, more often than not, you never see the building again.

Our client, a major UK contractor with an established in-house design and engineering function, is trying to fix that problem for the engineers who join them. They run a substantial programme of higher-risk building remediation across London, mostly existing residential stock built between the 1960s and the 2000s, and they need a Senior Fire Engineer who wants to stay attached to a project from strategy through to completion certificate, not hand it off at RIBA Stage 4.

This isn't a desk job wrapped in a site visit once a quarter. You'll be writing retrospective fire strategies against PAS 9980 methodology, then walking the scaffold six weeks later to check the cavity barrier detailing actually matches what you specified. For engineers who've spent years one step removed from their own work, that's usually the bit that lands hardest.

THE ROLE

You'll lead fire engineering input on a portfolio of existing HRBs undergoing remediation, working directly under the Head of Fire Engineering and alongside a small but growing in-house team. Expect a genuine mix of technical authority, you'll be the person signing off strategy decisions, and construction-stage grit, you'll be the person walking floors checking fire stopping against manufacturer detail. You'll also carry real weight on Building Safety Regulator engagement for buildings already in occupation, which is a corner of this sector that's still relatively thin on experienced hands.

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING

• Preparing and reviewing retrospective fire strategies for existing higher-risk residential buildings, using PAS 9980 methodology, site survey evidence and available as-built records.
• Leading external wall fire reviews and facade remediation assessments, covering cladding systems, cavity barriers, fire stopping, insulation and membrane interfaces.
• Owning Building Safety Case documentation and Golden Thread information for allocated buildings, and representing the fire engineering position in Building Safety Regulator gateway submissions.
• Carrying out and directing construction-stage QA inspections on remediation works, checking installed passive fire protection against approved design and manufacturer requirements.
• Reviewing contractor submissions, product substitutions and technical queries arising during remediation delivery.
• Engaging directly with Fire and Rescue Services and local Building Control on live remediation schemes.
• Mentoring Fire Engineers and graduate engineers within the team, and contributing to internal technical standards and guidance notes.
• Managing your own portfolio of buildings across the full remediation lifecycle, from initial assessment through to sign-off.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Degree in Fire Engineering or a closely related discipline, with CEng or IEng registration, or clearly working towards it.
• Solid consultancy or specialist advisory background, with hands-on experience of retrospective fire strategies, EWS1-related assessments or PAS 9980 work.
• Strong working knowledge of BS 9999, BS 9991, BS 7974, Approved Document B and the Building Safety Act as it applies to occupied HRBs.
• Genuine depth in passive fire protection: cavity barriers, fire stopping, compartmentation, external wall systems and their interfaces.
• Comfortable moving between technical report writing and site-based verification, ideally with some construction-stage or QA inspection experience already under your belt.
• Confident, clear communicator who can hold their own with Fire and Rescue Services, Building Control and BSR caseworkers.
• Full UK driving licence and willingness to travel to sites across London and the wider South East.

WHAT'S ON OFFER

• £70,000 to £85,000 depending on experience, plus car allowance.
• Direct line of sight from strategy to completion, on live occupied buildings rather than paper exercises.
• A defined path toward Head of Fire Engineering as the in-house team continues to grow
• Chartership support and a genuine CPD budget, not a token gesture.
• Hybrid working, with the flexibility that comes from being embedded in a wider engineering and project delivery function rather than a strategy team alone.
• The chance to build something close to the ground floor, as this in-house function scales its remediation capability over the next few years.

READY TO APPLY

If you're the engineer whose strategies have been sitting in other people's project files for years and you're ready to be the one on site when they're finally built out properly, we'd like to hear from you.