Translating Armed Forces Experience into Opportunities at Mott MacDonald

Mott MacDonald has launched Connectr, a free platform for service leavers, veterans, reservists, cadets, military spouses and partners, and others exploring a career after the Armed Forces. Register to see how your skills could translate into roles at Mott MacDonald and speak directly with colleagues who have already made the transition. You do not need to be ready to apply.

Anyone who has left the forces knows the awkward gap between what you can do and what a civilian job advert says it wants. You have led teams under pressure, kept complex kit running, planned logistics across continents and made decisions when the information was incomplete. Then you open a job description and none of those words appear.

Mott MacDonald, the global engineering and development consultancy, has built something to help close that gap. Connectr is a new online community for the Armed Forces community: service leavers, veterans, reservists, cadets, and military spouses and partners. It is not simply a job board. It is a place to explore where your experience could fit, hear from people who have made a similar move and ask questions before you apply.

Talk to someone who has done it

The heart of Connectr is its champions. These are Mott MacDonald colleagues who came from the armed forces themselves and now work across the business, from engineering and project management to commercial roles. Each has a profile on the platform, and once you have registered you can message them directly.

Ask them the questions you would not put in a cover letter. What was the first six months like? How did you explain your service record to a hiring manager? Which parts of forces life did you miss, and which were you glad to leave behind? They will tell you straight, because they were asking the same things not long ago.

See where your skills land

Connectr includes a skills matching tool that takes what you did in uniform and maps it to the kind of roles Mott MacDonald recruits for. If you ran a workshop, managed a convoy or coordinated a multi-unit exercise, the platform shows you the civilian job titles that call for exactly that, and the sectors where the demand is strongest.

Alongside it sits a library of insights: short pieces on how the company supports the armed forces community, what day-to-day life looks like in different teams, how applications work and the practical side of transition. There are videos from people in the business and a plain-English FAQ for everything else.

No pressure, no deadline

Much of what makes Connectr different is timing. Most careers pages only work if you are ready to apply today. Connectr is built for the person who is twelve months from their discharge date, the reservist weighing up a change, or the military partner who has just moved again and wants to know what is possible in a new city. You can register, explore, ask questions and come back when the time is right.

Mott MacDonald recognises that moving into civilian work can bring its own challenges, particularly when job titles and recruitment language do not always make it easy to see where Armed Forces experience fits. Yet the skills developed through service - from leadership and teamwork to technical expertise, resilience and decision-making in complex environments - are highly relevant across our projects and teams. Providing practical support and access to people who understand the transition can help individuals recognise those strengths and explore the opportunities open to them.

Mott MacDonald has signed the Armed Forces Covenant and holds the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme Gold Award, the highest level of recognition for employers that support defence and the Armed Forces community. Connectr puts that commitment into practice by making support available before someone has even decided to apply.

Roles worth a look right now

If you are closer to making a move, Mott MacDonald has highlighted a selection of live vacancies that may suit people with Armed Forces experience. Current roles worth exploring include:

• Principal Electrical Engineer, Building Services (Energy)

• Electrical Engineer, Building Services (Energy)

• Project Commercial Manager

• Principal Commercial Manager

• Project Manager

• Project Principal

• Senior / Associate Project Manager

• Engineering Project Manager

• Civil Engineer

The full curated list, with more roles added as they open, sits on our Mott MacDonald armed forces hot jobs page. 

Registering takes a couple of minutes. Head to Connectr: Armed Forces Careers at Mott MacDonald, create a profile, and start with the skills tool or go straight to a champion. Whether you leave the forces next month or in three years, the people on the other side have been where you are now.