Are you an experienced freshwater quality specialist looking to step into a highly influential leadership role within a growing technical team? Do you thrive managing complex, multi-year programmes while developing people, strengthening client relationships and driving high-quality delivery? Are you ready to play a central role shaping how APEM delivers freshwater quality services across the UK water sector?
APEM’s Freshwater Quality team continues to grow at pace, and we’re now looking for a Principal Consultant – Freshwater Quality to play a leading role within the team.
This is a senior opportunity for an experienced freshwater professional with strong project and operational leadership experience, ideally within the UK water sector. You’ll take a central role delivering major AMP8 programmes and complex multi-disciplinary projects, while supporting the continued growth and development of our freshwater quality capability.
In this role, you’ll lead the delivery of large-scale water and sediment quality projects—ensuring work is delivered safely, commercially and to a high technical standard. You’ll manage complex programmes involving multiple stakeholders, subcontractors and cross-divisional teams, while also supporting tendering, commercial management and client engagement activity.
You’ll become a key point of contact for clients and regulators, helping strengthen long-term relationships while identifying opportunities for future work and service growth. Alongside this, you’ll mentor and support senior and consultant grade scientists, helping build capability and maintain high standards across the team.
To be successful in this role, you’ll need:
- Demonstrable experience within the UK water sector, ideally supporting water company clients
- Proven experience leading operational delivery across multiple complex projects
- Strong understanding of freshwater quality and environmental monitoring
- Experience managing and developing project delivery teams
- Strong stakeholder and client relationship management skills
- Experience across the full project lifecycle, including bidding, tendering and commercial delivery
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
It would be great if you also have:
- Strong technical expertise in freshwater quality or environmental monitoring
- Experience with contractual and commercial management
- Knowledge of SOAF investigations or novel monitoring techniques such as eDNA
- Chartered status or membership of a relevant professional body
- Experience in water quality modelling, data interpretation or applied consultancy
You will be offered the chance to work on a variety of projects, many of our employees have worked on projects that have been of personal interest to them. We match this with a commitment to continuous development and learning to support your career. We also offer benefits to look after you, from private medical insurance for all employees, access to mental health first aiders and comprehensive income protection if you cannot work. We also offer superb flexible working options, balancing work with your life.
Next steps
We are focused on creating a diverse and inclusive team. If you can’t tick every box on our job description, then we are still keen to hear from you and are open to supporting your development. That may be working part time or supporting you to gain experience in a specific area – we are a growing company and are able to adapt roles to reflect individual skills.
If you think you have what it takes to join our fast-growing business, then please apply immediately on our website. All we need some basic information and your CV, we will review all applications quickly and will respond to all applications.