Project Leader Engineering in London

Reports to: Senior Project Manager Engineering

Location: London - Heathrow

Contract Type: Permanent

Introduction to role

Vanderlande is a global leader in logistics process automation across the airports, parcel, and warehouse sectors. The UK & Ireland Airports Engineering department forms part of our worldwide engineering community of more than 1,000 colleagues across multiple technical disciplines.

As a Project Leader Engineering, you will play a key role in delivering complex engineering projects in a collaborative and supportive environment. You will collaborate with colleagues across engineering project management, customers, and partners to ensure high-quality technical solutions are delivered safely, sustainably, and on time. This role offers the opportunity to develop technical leadership skills while contributing to projects with real-world impact. Vanderlande values different perspectives and supports ongoing learning and career development and welcomes applicants from all backgrounds and experiences as we build a diverse engineering team.

Role Responsibilities

• Support and promote a safety-first culture, ensuring technical health and safety considerations are embedded into designs from the outset.
• Lead multidisciplinary internal and external engineering teams, providing clear technical direction and accountability to achieve successful project delivery.
• Create and maintain clear, achievable engineering project plans that support collaboration and transparency.
• Provide technical leadership to multidisciplinary teams, fostering an inclusive and supportive team environment.
• Manage engineering budgets by identifying risks and opportunities and supporting well-informed decision-making.
• Own and manage the delivery of technical solutions, ensuring systems are designed, integrated, and delivered to meet agreed performance, quality, safety, and customer requirements.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of engineering and project management practices, sharing knowledge and supporting the wider engineering community.

Role Qualification and Skills

• Have a degree (or equivalent experience) in mechanical, electrical, controls, or a related engineering discipline.
• Experience delivering complex engineering projects in dynamic, operationally critical environments, balancing customer requirements, technical performance, safety, and project objectives.
• Experience working with automated or complex integrated systems, such as material handling, industrial automation, logistics, manufacturing, transportation, or infrastructure environments, would be advantageous.
• Enjoy working collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams and stakeholders.
• Able to balance detailed technical decision-making with a broader understanding of project, customer, operational, and business objectives.
• Working knowledge of engineering project management principles including planning, risk management, scope control, stakeholder management, and budget management.
• Communicate clearly and confidently, both verbally and in writing.
• Are comfortable using standard digital tools (such as MS Office) to support planning and reporting.
• Have professional engineering accreditation or have a desire and commitment to work towards professional registration (we will support you).

What we offer

• 28 days annual leave (excluding public holidays).
• Bupa Medical Cover.
• YuLife – Wellbeing membership with fast access to GP appointments, promotion of health and wellbeing along with daily quests to gain Yucoins that can be swapped for shopping vouchers.
• A challenging work environment with lots of opportunities for career progression.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Yellow Nest is a salary exchange scheme that reduces childcare costs for parents and employers.
• Pension with Aviva.
• Access to Achievers, an award-winning recognition platform that inspires to recognise your coworkers where points are awarded that can be exchanged for a range of goods and discounts.

Diversity & Inclusion

Vanderlande is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age marital status or disability status. If you feel there is a barrier that potentially prevents you from applying, we are always happy to discuss or explore any reasonable adjustments that can be made to support your application.