Closing Date 2025-07-28 Job Title: Rising Main HIT Lead Location: We offer a hybrid approach to working with 2–3 days in the office and 2–3 days working from home each week. Base location can be any of our core regional offices: Chatham, Otterbourne, Worthing or Falmer. Occasionally travel to sites may be required. Contract Type: Permanent Hours: 37 hours per week, Monday – Friday Salary: We are offering a competitive salary commensurate with experience, alongside a £400 monthly car allowance and up to 10% bonus. Job Overview Due to an internal promotion, we are pleased to be recruiting for a Rising Main HIT Lead—a pivotal leadership role responsible for delivering one of our most critical engineering programmes. This role will oversee the performance, renewal, and resilience of our wastewater rising mains ensuring safe, reliable, and environmentally compliant wastewater transport across our network. Reporting to the Head of Wastewater Networks, you will lead a team of 6 High Impact Team Project Engineers through all stages of delivery—from investigation and design to commissioning and long-term maintenance. They are based across our whole region. Responsibilities will include, but are not limited to: Leading the delivery of a multi-million-pound annual portfolio of capital projects focused on rising mains renewals and performance optimisation. Managing multidisciplinary teams to ensure effective collaboration between engineering, operations, and external contractors. Driving proactive intervention strategies to extend asset life, reduce pollution incidents, and minimise reactive interventions. Supporting long-term planning, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements and strategic service goals. Ensuring robust governance, performance reporting, financial forecasting, and regulatory compliance. Embedding a culture of safety, accountability, continuous improvement, and technical excellence. Providing hands-on mentorship and leadership to develop a high-performing engineering team. About You We’re looking for a strategic and technically strong leader with proven experience in infrastructure programme delivery—ideally in the water or utilities sector. You’ll have experience managing complex capital programmes, leading high-performing teams, and collaborating across technical and operational functions. Your understanding of wastewater systems, regulatory frameworks, and asset management principles will be essential in driving long-term performance and resilience. Qualifications and experience that would set you apart: Chartered Engineer status or equivalent. Experience delivering infrastructure or utility-based projects. Familiarity with NEC contracts and APM project methodologies. Strong understanding of H&S, environmental, and compliance standards. Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills. Ability to lead through influence, challenge constructively, and inspire continuous improvement. Package This role is offered full-time with hybrid working flexibility. Base location can be any of our key regional offices: Chatham, Otterbourne, Worthing or Falmer. We are offering a salary commensurate with experience plus: Company and performance-related bonus Single cover private medical insurance Generous pension scheme (up to 11% employer contribution) Life assurance – 4x annual salary Health benefits through our Cash Plan 25 days holiday per year Two paid community volunteering days per year Study support for job-relevant qualifications Flexible return-to-work options post-maternity Access to savings and discounts across many retailers Why Southern Water? At Southern Water, we’re investing £7.8bn from 2025–2030 to build a more resilient, environmentally sustainable water network. You’ll be joining at a time of major transformation, with the opportunity to shape the future of wastewater performance in our region. We foster a culture of inclusion, innovation, and development. Whether you're looking to lead impactful change or take your career to the next level, Southern Water offers the platform and support to help you thrive. This isn’t just a job—it’s a chance to drive lasting impact on public health, the environment, and the communities we serve. Apply now and be part of a team leading change across the water industry. Our purpose is big. Our impact is huge. And we know that every single one of us has the power, through our actions, to positively change society and the environment for good. It’s why careers with us have real meaning. Because, if you’re driven and ambitious, we can offer you huge opportunities for personal growth, professional development and constant innovation. Forever evolving. Forever focused on doing the right thing, we empower and encourage everyone to play to their strengths and to help us shape a fair and positive future for all. We believe in Water for Life. If you do too, Dive Right In. Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support – because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That’s why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you’ll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position. Does this opportunity excite you but you’re not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that ‘normal’ office hours aren’t possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we’ll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?
