Principal or Associate Director

Role: Principal Consultant / Associate Director Environmental Economist

Location: UK - London, Harwell, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow
Europe - Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Denmark

Role ID: 2024-2410

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Role Purpose and Key Responsibilities

We have a vacancy for a Principal Consultant or Associate Director to provide technical leadership of our economics work-streams across air quality, industrial emissions and circular economy. Working in parallel with our economics leads for chemicals and green finance, the role will also contribute across other environmental policy and economics themes that may arise. As well as the policy areas mentioned above, our economists collaborate closely with technical experts across other teams such as water, waste, nature, agriculture, climate change and energy.

Working in international, multi-disciplinary teams, you will help to win and deliver high profile projects that play an integral role in driving regulatory approaches in the UK, EU and worldwide. You will lead the writing of high quality proposals for customers, and undertake other business development activities such as partner relationship management and participation in promotional events. You will play a central role in shaping the strategy for the Environmental Policy team and our economics offering. You will use your expertise to lead the successful execution of complex projects and to support the development of more junior colleagues.

You will use your technical skills to provide insights to inform policy decisions. You will be involved in policy impact assessments and evaluation, requiring skills in stakeholder engagement, cost-benefit analysis, socio-economic analysis, feasibility assessment and evaluation. We expect you to have extensive experience in the processes for development of public policy and the methods for assessing the economic, environmental and social impacts of policies, programmes and measures.

Key Competencies and Experience

• Qualified to degree level in economics. Studies could be a combination of economics with related subject, including: engineering and science and/or environment with a significant focus on economics.
• Relevant experience within consultancy, leading proposals and projects for European Commission and/or UK government departments.
• Experience and/or an interest to work as an applied economist in air quality and industrial emissions policy, with the flexibility to apply expertise across a wider range of environmental thematic areas.
• An understanding of environmental issues, and UK/ EU/ international policy, gained during studies or work experience.
• The capacity and interest to work flexibly across a range of thematic areas and projects simultaneously and successfully manage competing priorities.
• Highly numerate, with a track record in carrying out complex quantitative analysis.
• Confidence to effectively lead tasks, setting technical direction and delegating to colleagues to deliver work effectively and efficiently.
• Understanding of and track record in how to write winning proposals.
• Fluency in English and excellent report writing skills.
• Ability to explain complex economic concepts to a non-economist audience.
• Demonstrable experience in the following:
  • Economic theory and policy cycle (ex ante impact assessment of policies and regulations; policy development and implementation, ex post evaluation of policies and programmes).
  • Tools and methods for: economic and/or financial modelling, data collection, validation and analysis, qualitative economic analysis, multi-criteria analysis.

Desirable Competencies and Experience

• Knowledge of how to value health and ecosystem impacts of pollution.
• Knowledge of business models, investment and/or financing for environment.
• Proficiency in using statistical or mathematical software.
• Business development experience: generation of new business leads, identification of new service offerings, building client relationships.
• Project management experience.
• Team / staff management or leadership experience.
• Fluency in other European languages.

Skills and Behaviours

• Demonstrate a passion to create a more sustainable world, and a clear motivation to work for Ricardo and align with its values.
• Enjoy solving complex analytical problems that feature economic analysis, and actively enjoy working on a wide range of topics that may initially be unfamiliar to them.
• Demonstrate exceptional critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.
• Have excellent communication skills, both written and oral, combined with influencing skills.
• Come to work with flexibility, resilience and enthusiasm.
• Be accurate and attentive to detail.
• Be an effective and proactive team worker, capable of supporting and developing peers and other staff members.
• Bring energy and enthusiasm for growing the business.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.