Principal Waste Management Specialist

Job description

Your Impact:

At Jacobs, we'll inspire and empower you to deliver your best work so you can evolve, grow and succeed - today and into tomorrow. With more than 55,000 people in 40 countries, working at Jacobs offers an exciting range of opportunities to develop your career within a supportive and diverse team who always strive to do the right thing for our people, clients and communities.

People are Jacobs' greatest asset, and we offer a competitive package to retain and attract the best talent.

In addition to the benefits you'd expect, UK employees also receive free single medical cover and digital GP service, family-friendly benefits such as enhanced parental leave pay and free membership of employee assistance and parental programmes, plus reimbursement towards relevant professional development and memberships. We also give back to our communities through our Collectively program which incorporates matched-funding, paid volunteering time and charitable donations.

Work-life balance and flexibility is a key focus area for Jacobs. We're happy to discuss hybrid, part-time and flexible working hours, patterns and locations to suit you and our business.

About the Opportunity

We are recruiting for a Principal Waste Management Specialist to join our Radioactive Waste Management Consultancy business. Due to the rapid growth of our business in the civil nuclear waste management we require more support to deliver and continue to expand our expertise.

Jacobs has a leading role in waste strategy, inventory and compliance underpinning the future management of radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuels and nuclear materials. In the UK, we deliver a diverse range of projects for waste producers, waste management organisations and strategic authorities across all aspects of the waste lifecycle. We are delivering similarly interesting and exciting projects across the globe including projects for clients in Norway, Central & Eastern Europe and Japan.

We are looking to recruit a highly motivated candidate as a Principal Waste Management Specialist to play a key role in continuing the growth of our business. You will join a friendly, highly collaborative, multi-disciplinary group The candidate will be expected to lead the technical direction of work areas providing waste assessment and disposability advice to waste providers, providing input to Jacobs' waste retrievals projects and supporting disposability on behalf of waste management organisations..

The vacancy provides an excellent opportunity for those wishing to develop their careers with potential to lead a growing technical area and develop a team.

We are operating under flexible working arrangements, with a mixture of office-based and home working environments. The role can be based at Harwell, Cumbria, Scrabster or Birchwood and other locations will be considered.

Key Responsibilities:

As a Principal Waste Management Specialist , you will provide technical expertise on a wide variety of projects for customers including radioactive waste management organisations, radioactive waste producers and regulators, both in the UK and overseas. Work includes a wide variety of activities across the areas of integrated radioactive waste management, spent fuels and nuclear materials including:

• Leading or providing significant input to disposability assurance activities for both Higher Activity Waste and Lower Activity Waste including both the development of disposability submissions (e.g LLWR's WCH or NWS's LoC submissions) and the review of disposal cases
• Key technical areas could include:

o Assessment of the compliance of packaging solutions with disposal criteria and specifications

o Technical audits of nuclear facilities or processes

o Management of records and information

o Management of risks and uncertainties

• Managing technical assessments across a range of topic areas which could include:

o Waste package inventory

o Wasteform properties and expected evolution

o Container performance and durability

o Accident performance

o Operational, transport and post closure safety

• Provision of strategic input to Jacobs' waste retrievals and decommissioning projects, potentially including on-site support
• Production of high quality technical reports on the outcomes of your work and the work of others Implementing efficient tools and routes for the robust management of data
• Delivering projects relating to the safe and timely disposal of radioactive waste
• Producing and checking calculations, analyses and interpretations
• Leading interactions with clients and stakeholders
• Supporting the continued development of our business through identifying, bidding for and winning new work with new or existing clients

Here's What You'll Need:

• Degree qualification (or equivalent training and experience) in appropriate mathematical, physical science or engineering discipline
• Significant experience in a comparable role (individual candidates need experience of some of the technical topic areas described above, not necessarily all).
• Ability to analyse complex data sets and models, distil the important safety features and communicate concisely with specialists and senior stakeholders
• Numerate with excellent technical writing/reviewing skills
• Adaptable and able to work on a variety of projects, prioritising as appropriate

The following are not essential but we welcome applications from candidates who have any of the following experience:

• Practical experience of waste management operations on nuclear sites and/or Radioactive Waste Adviser (RWA) certification.
• Application of the Nuclear Waste Services' Letter of Compliance / Disposability Assessment process, Low level waste disposal route knowledge and associated assurance activities
• Applying nuclear-industry software tools (e.g. GoldSim, FISPIN, ORIGEN, Abaqus, COMSOL)
• Scientific programming (e.g. Python, Mathematica, MATLAB or advanced Microsoft Excel features such as macros)
• General knowledge of reactor physics and engineering - specifically how nuclear fuel behaves in a reactor and how fission and fusion processes generate radioactive waste
• General knowledge of treatment or encapsulation technologies that may be applied to manage radioactive wastes
• Business development, project management and client engagement

Our Culture

Our values stand on a foundation of safety, integrity, inclusion and diversity. We put people at the heart of our business and we truly believe that by supporting one another through our culture of caring, we all succeed. We value positive mental health and a sense of belonging for all employees. Find out more about life at Jacobs.

We aim to embed inclusion and diversity in everything we do. We know that if we are inclusive, we're more connected, and if we are diverse, we're more creative. We accept people for who they are, regardless of age, disability, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, mental health, race, faith or belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and whether you're pregnant or on family leave. This is reflected in our wide range of Global Employee Networks centred on inclusion and diversity - ACE, Careers, Enlace, Harambee, OneWorld, Prism, Vetnet, and Women's - find out more about our employee networks here.

Jacobs partners with VERCIDA to help us attract and retain diverse talent. For greater online accessibility please visit www.vercida.com to view and access our roles. As a Disability Confident employer, we will interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for a vacancy. We welcome applications from candidates who are seeking flexible working and from those who may not meet all the listed requirements for a role
If you require further support or reasonable adjustments with regards to the recruitment process (for example, you require the application form in a different format), contact the team .

Your application experience is important to us and we're keen to adapt to make every interaction even better. We welcome feedback on our recruitment process and if you need more from us before deciding to join Jacobs then please let us know.