Cost Specialist in Plymouth

At Babcock we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together, and if you join us, you can play your part as a Cost Specialist at our Devonport Royal Dockyard site.

The role involves helping keep complex submarine programmes on track across our Naval Nuclear Submarines business. You’ll turn cost data into clear insight, strengthening project performance, enabling confident decision-making and directly supporting the Royal Navy’s mission. It’s meaningful work with real world impact, and a platform to grow your skills in project controls, cost control and earned value management (EVM).

Day-to-day, you’ll be involved with:

• Collection, processing and analysis of actuals data.
• Providing multi-layered reporting both internally and externally.
• Providing justification, analysis and recommendations to the business based on data and supporting investigations.
• Managing actuals against cost performance baselines and controlling changes to those baselines.
• Producing clear monthly cost reports for senior leaders and external stakeholders.
• Analysing cost and performance data, providing insight, recommendations and actionable next steps.
• Coordinating accurate forecasts with activity owners and investigating variances to plan.
• Supporting deep-dive investigations to drive corrective action and continuous improvement.

This role is full time, 35 hours per week and provides hybrid working arrangements with 3-4 days in the office/onsite and 1-2 days working from home.

Essential experience:

• Experience in a cost control/management environment.
• Understanding of project controls - especially cost control, earned value and finance.
• Strong data analysis capability and attention to detail.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint).
• Confident stakeholder management and communication skills.

Qualifications:

• APM Project Fundamentals Qualification (PFQ) or APM Project Management Qualification (PMQ) - desirable.

Security Clearance:

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Standard (BPSS) / Security Check (SC) security clearance for this role.

What we offer:

• Generous holiday allowance.
• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance.
• Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+.
• Employee share scheme.
• Employee shopping savings portal.
• Payment of Professional Fees.
• Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave.
• Holiday Trading allows UK Babcock employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement.
• ‘Be Kind Day’ enables employees to take one working day’s paid leave a year to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity.
• Excellent development opportunities and benefits package including an employee assistance programme supporting physical, mental and financial wellbeing.

We’re Babcock — a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 26,000 people working together to make a difference. Here, you’ll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we’re building a future that lasts — not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance.

We call that lifetime engineering. Join us and see how far we can go, together.

We are a disability confident committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email careers@babcockinternational.com with the subject header ‘Reasonable adjustments requirement’. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone’s free to thrive.

We are happy to talk about flexible working – please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.

Closing date: 13/02/2026