Salary: £48-£55k + Benefits
Status: Permanent /Full-time strongly preferable (requests for part-time/flexible working arrangements are welcome)
Transitioning to a low-carbon energy system to meet the 2050 Net Zero target is one of the most complex and important challenges that humanity faces, transport use is currently one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, so the application of cutting-edge modelling tools to simulate the performance and impact of different transport technologies & designs on the energy system is becoming increasingly important as the UK strives towards decarbonisation.
As the demand for our transport systems modelling & simulation expertise and services continues to grow, we have a brand-new opportunity to join our Transport Practice within our Infrastructure & Engineering department.
The Practice is involved in a rich variety of work across the transport and energy systems. The team covers a variety of transport systems from cars and vans, up through heavy duty vehicles and into the maritime sector, bringing the lens of energy systems impacts to all its work. As such you will get the opportunity to work on strategically important projects, with a particular emphasis in developing our transport sector offering and the role and impact of transport system decarbonisation as a part of the overall energy system transformation.
The team uses a variety of existing models, built largely in Python and MATLAB, to assess multiple vehicle types, user behaviours and the associated infrastructure requirements and energy system impacts. The team is also in the process of developing new tools and enhancing existing ones, as we aim to support a broad range of organisations understand and integrate decarbonised transport systems.
You.
We imagine you come from an engineering background and have gained real-world technical experience within the transport and/or energy systems space. Alternatively, you may come from an aligned engineering research background but are keen to apply that expertise outside of an academic environment.
Either way you are genuinely interested in applying your engineering & analytical capabilities to support a wide range of private and public sector organisations make innovation development and deployment decisions and guide policy and investment to accelerate the Net Zero transition.
What is also important is that you enjoy and are effective working on a broad range of collaborative projects, enabling you to consult with internal teams and external parties, to translate needs and requirements into clear questions and proposals that can be investigated and answered.
You will also be more than capable of developing clear and meaningful insights from the work undertaken and be able to communicate the findings in a creative and engaging way, via reports, presentations, and other engagement activities. You will also be able to demonstrate not only technical expertise but also the ability to guide and mentor members of a team and would enjoy providing direction and support.
The Opportunity.
Reporting to the Transport Practice Manager, from day one you will be providing engineering knowledge, guidance, and data in relation to a variety of transport systems to both your colleagues and external stakeholders.
As a senior engineer you will be the technical lead on various collaborative projects, so will be developing project scopes, requirements, and leading technical engagements with customers, ultimately delivering high-quality collaborative projects.
This work will largely relate to vehicles, their usage, enabling technologies, supporting infrastructure and their interaction with the energy system. You will be assessing decarbonisation pathways for light vehicles, heavy duty vehicles and maritime transport decarbonisation. Building from knowledge and experience of vehicle and/or vessel segmentation, user behaviour and technical and commercial requirements. You will also be leading technical and economic analysis of low and zero carbon transport sector transformations within a whole system context, understanding how technology, policy and stakeholder engagement within transport can play its role in achieving Net Zero 2050 targets.
The outputs from these projects will be varied, from the refinement or creation of new analytical tools and data sets, the generation of reports, the provision of technical guidance around transport decarbonisation in terms of both the role it can play as we strive towards Net Zero and its impact on other parts of the wider energy system.
Joining the team as a senior engineer we will expect you to spend time initially developing your understanding of the work the Transport Practice delivers and the tools and data we use in both internal and external projects. It will be important that you build and cultivate existing and new relationships with external stakeholders across transport sectors. This will enable you to support the business to have an up to date understanding of the opportunities, barriers and trends affecting those stakeholders and how the Catapult’s expertise might be able to help them. You will also be expected to work closely with business development functions to secure projects focused on transport decarbonisation and the impacts on the energy system.
Building on the above you will have responsibility for the delivery of high-quality work and to communicate and present solutions, findings and thought leadership externally via various forums, presentations, panels, etc.
As you develop and grow into the role you will work closely with the Transport Practice Manager to help define priority areas for the Catapult to address with regards to the interaction between transport and energy and the innovation needed. You will also take on the leadership of the development of at least one of the Transport Team’s modelling assets, ensuring road mapped maintenance and development takes place to support future innovation projects.
Next Step
So, if you would like to continue to develop your career in transport decarbonisation, and in doing so have a meaningful impact on the energy transition and the UK’s drive to hit Net Zero, then look no further. You may have just discovered the opportunity you were looking for.
We welcome applications from all, including those who may be returning to work, those wishing to work flexibly for any reason, and those who may need additional support.