Senior Structural Engineer Technical Excellence

We're always on the lookout for insightful, talented, and imaginative people to join our practice. As an Employee Owned Trust, we are committed to the development and success of our staff and maintaining the ethos of the practice. If you want to be part of a creative, friendly, and dynamic team, then we want to hear from you.

About HTS :

We're always on the lookout for insightful, talented, and imaginative people to join our practice. As an Employee Owned Trust, we are committed to the development and success of our staff and maintaining the ethos of the practice. If you want to be part of a creative, friendly, and dynamic team, then we want to hear from you.

Heyne Tillett Steel is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive workforce.

About The Role :

We are seeking an experienced Structural Engineer to join our Technical Excellence Group in a specialist, non-project-delivery capacity. This is a pivotal role within the practice, focused on safeguarding engineering quality, elevating technical standards, and shaping the next generation of structural engineers across the organisation. You will be part of a team that acts as an independent, senior technical authority, providing rigorous scrutiny of project outputs.

This is an excellent opportunity for a highly experienced engineer who has "been there and done it" on live projects and now wishes to apply that depth of knowledge to a broader, firm-wide technical role, with genuine influence over design quality, innovation, and the development of people at all levels.

1. Technical Review & Assurance

• Conduct in-depth, independent reviews of calculation packages, design philosophies, and structural reports across a range of project types, sectors, and stages (from concept to completion on site).
• Scrutinise key design assumptions, load paths, code compliance, and robustness of structural solutions.
• Provide constructive, clearly documented feedback to project teams, identifying both risks and opportunities for improvement.
• Act as a technical escalation point for complex or contentious design issues referred by project teams.
• Support bid and tender reviews where unusual, novel, or high-risk structural solutions are proposed, offering an independent sense-check prior to submission to clients.
• Offer an internal "second opinion" service for designers facing unusual or complex technical challenges; a trusted, impartial sounding board sitting outside the normal project hierarchy, encouraging engineers to seek advice without fear of judgement.
• Support the business's quality assurance framework, helping to identify trends and recurring issues across projects.

2. Standards, Governance & Knowledge Management

• Maintain awareness of changes to codes of practice, legislation and industry guidance, ensuring timely dissemination across the business.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of the company's technical governance framework, including peer review protocols and risk categorisation of projects.
• Support incident/near-miss investigations from a technical perspective, feeding lessons learned back into training and guidance material.
• Promote a positive, open culture around raising technical concerns and learning from mistakes.

3. Digital Design & Computational Oversight

• Work closely with the Computational Design Team to provide experienced structural input on the development, validation, and governance of digital design tools, including BIM workflows, parametric design, and AI-assisted design checking.
• Ensure robust verification and sense-checking protocols for computational outputs, ensuring automation and digital tools enhance (rather than replace) sound engineering judgement.
• Support the safe, consistent adoption of new digital tools across project teams, identifying training needs as these technologies evolve.
• Act as a technical liaison with external university partners, supporting collaborative research projects relevant to structural engineering practice.
• Monitor emerging research, materials, and methodologies, assessing their practical application within the business.
• Help translate academic research into practical guidance, design tools, or updated internal standards.
• Represent the company on relevant external industry panels and committees (e.g. IStructE technical committees, SCOSS, CROSS reporting), maintaining the firm's visibility and influence in shaping industry-wide best practice.
• Bring back insights from external research, panels, and industry bodies to inform internal standards and training.

5. Training & Technical Development

• Take a holistic view of technical training needs across the organisation.
• Design and deliver technical training sessions, workshops, and lunchtime learning sessions on structural design topics, lessons learned, and emerging best practice.
• Develop structured mentoring pathways for engineers at all stages of their career, including informal technical mentoring of senior engineers and associates.
• Contribute to the creation and maintenance of internal design guides, standard details, templates, and calculation checklists.
• Support the development of competency frameworks aligned with institution requirements (e.g. IStructE/ICE Chartership).
• Identify skills gaps across the business and assist in developing internal training programmes.

Ideal Candidate:

• Chartered Structural Engineer (IStructE, ICE, or equivalent).
• Demonstrable experience across a broad range of structural materials, forms, and sectors.
• Strong track record of complex technical design on challenging projects.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical issues clearly and diplomatically to engineers at all levels, including senior/director-level staff.
• A genuine passion for mentoring, training, and developing others.
• High attention to detail, with a methodical, questioning approach to technical review.
• Comfortable providing robust, independent challenge in a constructive and collaborative manner.
• Experience engaging with academic/research institutions.
• Previous involvement in technical panels or industry working groups.
• Experience developing internal training programmes or technical guidance documents.
• Familiarity with digital design tools (BIM, parametric design, computational workflows) and an interest in their safe, effective adoption.
• Published technical papers, articles, or conference presentations.