Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Design in Bath

At the University of Bath, engineering and design sit at the heart of our academic identity and our ambitions for the decade ahead. As we develop Strategy 2036, our framework focused on global excellence, outstanding people, and high-impact research and education, we are seeking to appoint a Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & Design to lead that agenda from the front.

This appointment comes at a pivotal moment. With a new institutional strategy taking shape and significant opportunities ahead in research, education, and global engagement, the Faculty is well positioned for its next phase. What it requires now is the right leader to drive it forward.

The Faculty of Engineering & Design is one of Bath's largest and most distinguished academic communities, comprising four top-performing departments: Architecture & Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electronic & Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. It is home to approximately 3000 students and over 300 education and research staff, with student entry standards among the highest in the UK.

The Faculty conducts high-quality research to advance engineering and address the environmental, social, and industrial challenges our world faces. Research activity is organised around three large-scale themes: digital, health, and sustainability, delivered through a network of well-resourced interdisciplinary centres and institutes. These include the Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (IAAPS) at the Bristol and Bath Science Park, alongside centres specialising in bioengineering, climate adaptation, sustainable energy, and advanced manufacturing. The Faculty's research approach is deliberately challenge-led and collaborative, producing work with real-world impact across industry, government, and society.

As Dean you will hold three distinct and equally important leadership responsibilities:

• Faculty Leader. You will set direction, shape culture, and drive performance. This means raising research quality and impact, building a compelling and diverse educational offer, championing commercialisation and innovation, and ensuring the Faculty is an environment in which exceptional people do their best work.
• Academic Executive. Working closely with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, you will lead strategic planning, budget setting, student number targets, and KPI delivery, with direct accountability for the Faculty's financial sustainability and operational performance.
• Institutional Leader. You will sit on the University Executive Board from day one, contributing to Bath's wider institutional strategy and policy. This role extends well beyond the Faculty, and we are looking for a Dean who is genuinely energised by that broader institutional responsibility.

Key Priorities Will Include:

• Developing a compelling and distinctive educational offer, attracting and inspiring a diverse student community
• Enhancing research performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, and commercialisation
• Growing global engagement, partnerships, and transnational education activity
• Strengthening the Faculty's culture, supporting staff, enabling high performance, and championing equality, diversity and inclusion
• Ensuring strong financial management and maximising new income streams
• Leading strategic planning, operational delivery, and cross-University collaboration at scale

This appointment carries a genuine mandate to lead. The University will set the strategic direction and values, and then empower you, as Dean, to deliver, with the trust, autonomy, and institutional backing to make bold decisions and drive meaningful change at pace.

You will bring academic and/or professional qualifications and relevant experience in a discipline appropriate to the Faculty, with the personal authority and credibility to lead a top-performing engineering community. You will have a proven record of leadership and management in a higher education environment, with the ability to motivate, develop, and performance-manage academic and professional staff. Your style will be open, inclusive, and collaborative, earning trust at all levels of the organisation. You will be an exceptional communicator, with the confidence and interpersonal range to engage effectively with students, academic colleagues, senior leaders, and external partners, supported by strong written, negotiation, and presentation skills. You will have a track record of leading change, managing complex resources, and making strategic decisions that deliver results, alongside a sound understanding of the national and international higher education landscape. Experience of cross-disciplinary working and engagement with professional bodies would be an advantage. Above all, you will bring the leadership character and cultural conviction to build an environment in which people and performance genuinely thrive.

We are a distinctive institution: compact, campus-based, and genuinely cohesive. It is a place where leaders can see strategy become reality, and where the relationships between academic and professional communities are substantive rather than merely formal. You will join at a moment of genuine strategic momentum, working alongside a Vice-Chancellor who is an engineer and who understands this Faculty, a Provost who is deeply invested in Faculty performance, and a senior leadership team committed to excellence. This is a role with real autonomy. You will be trusted to lead, empowered to act, and supported to succeed.

We can offer you a very generous employer contributory pension scheme, generous annual leave allowance with an additional 5 discretionary days so that you can enjoy a positive work-life balance. We are a family-friendly University and with an increasingly agile workforce, are open to flexible working arrangements. An excellent reward package that recognises the talents of our diverse workforce, a wide range of personal and professional development opportunities, and several support options available for new and existing staff to help with the cost of some immigration expenses which you may be eligible for: Relocation allowance, Visa Reimbursement, and Interest-Free Loan.

We aim to be an inclusive university, where difference is celebrated, respected and encouraged. We have an excellent international reputation with staff from over 60 different nations and have made a positive commitment towards gender equality and intersectionality receiving a Silver Athena SWAN award. We truly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds will lead to a better environment for our employees and students, so we encourage applications from all genders, backgrounds, and communities, particularly from under-represented groups, and value the positive impact that will have on our teams. We are very proud to be an autism-friendly university and are an accredited Disability Confident Leader; committed to building disability confidence and supporting disabled staff.