Principal Consultant

Job Title: Principal Consultant - Water Utilities Domain & Solutions Lead

Job Location: London, UK(Hybrid)

Job Type: Contract (6 months initially)

Job Description:

About the role :

We deliver cloud, data, application and IT operations programmes for water companies and are pursuing further data platform, AI and IT operations opportunities across the sector. We are now investing in a senior practitioner who has spent the last decade delivering technology programmes into UK water companies from an IT services or systems integration background.

You will be the water and utilities domain authority across our bids, solutions and client conversations. You will read a tender response and know whether a water company's IT and procurement evaluators will believe it. You will work with our Data and AI, Digital and Software, Cloud and Infrastructure, Digital IT Operations and Enterprise Platform teams to shape their capability around the problems a water company CIO, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Head of Data or Head of IT Operations actually has. And you will sit in front of those clients as someone who has delivered their kind of programme before.

This is a delivery practitioner role for someone from the IT services industry. It is not a water company operations role and not a management consulting role.

What you will do :

Solution contextualisation:

• Work with service lines to shape offerings around water use cases: leakage and pressure analytics, pollution and storm overflow monitoring, asset health modelling, capital programme systems, customer contact and billing, regulatory reporting, and IT operations for a 24x7 operational estate.
• Own the water application landscape view (EAM, work and field management, GIS, telemetry and SCADA, hydraulic modelling, billing and CRM, data platforms), how these integrate, and where the sector's data and integration pain points sit.
• Act as the domain authority in solution reviews and translate regulatory change (PR24, the single integrated regulator, asset management maturity, AMP9) into technology implications.

Client engagement and delivery :

• Lead discovery workshops and executive conversations with water company technology leaders and programme directors.
• Join delivery engagements as the water domain lead, providing sector assurance to solution architects, data engineers, programme managers and offshore teams.
• Bring an insider's view of how water company IT functions buy, govern and measure suppliers, including framework procurement and the AMP investment cycle.

Practice building :

• Develop water points of view, thought leadership and presence at sector events such as DigiGov, Utility Week Live, Institute of Water and British Water.
• Build reusable water assets (use-case library, landscape maps, regulatory calendar, win themes) and upskill UK account and offshore delivery teams on water sector fundamentals.

What we are looking for :

Essential :

• Ten or more years in an IT services or systems integration company (for example Accenture, Capgemini, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, IBM, Atos/Eviden, CGI, Kainos, Sopra Steria, DXC), with the majority of that time delivering to UK water companies or UK utilities with substantial water exposure.
• Hands-on delivery accountability as a programme manager, delivery lead, engagement manager, solution architect or domain consultant on at least two of: data platform and analytics; enterprise asset management (Maximo, SAP or Ellipse); customer, billing and CRM; GIS and mobile workforce; cloud migration and IT operations; integration and application modernisation.
• Water sector fluency. Working knowledge of the price review and AMP cycle, performance commitments and outcome delivery incentives, C-MeX, the roles of Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the DWI, and the move to a single integrated regulator, and what these mean for a water company's technology priorities and investment timing.
• Knows the audience. Has worked directly with water company CIOs, Heads of Enterprise Architecture, Heads of Data, IT Operations leaders and IT procurement, and understands how they evaluate and govern suppliers.
• Bid experience from the supplier side. Has authored, reviewed or led responses to water or utilities technology tenders and can point to outcomes.
• Clear writing and confident challenge. Writes crisply in UK English and is willing to challenge a solution design or a client assumption, constructively.
• Willing to travel to client sites across England, and occasionally Scotland and Wales.

Desirable:

• Time spent inside a water company IT or digital function as an embedded architect, programme lead or secondee.
• Experience on major water transformation programmes such as billing replacement, EAM consolidation, smart metering or data platform build.
• Exposure to energy networks (RIIO), the non-household water retail market (MOSL)
• TOGAF, SAFe, MSP or equivalent delivery and architecture credentials.