Associate Director - Climate Risk

Overview

Role: Associate Director – Climate Risk Analysis

Location: UK Flexible

Role ID: 2023-1909

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. 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.

Energy & Environment, one of Ricardo plc’s five operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy & strategy to implementation.

Key responsibilities

We are currently looking for an Associate Director with expertise in climate risk analysis to join our Policy, Strategy & Economics Practice.  The successful candidate will be responsible for developing new services and solutions in the field of climate risk analysis and taking these services to potential clients in both the public and private sectors.  National governments, local authorities, utilities/infrastructure providers and individual businesses increasingly need access to robust analysis and data on the climate-related physical risks to the economy, to the regions that they operate in, to physical infrastructure that they are responsible for and to their day-to-day operations.  Identifying and analysing these future risks requires expertise from many different disciplines from within and outside the field of climate change to be brought together to provide advice and guidance to the different types of organisations identified above.  Additionally, there is the potential for new, advanced analytical modelling tools to be developed and commercialised to support climate risk analysis. Ricardo has existing capabilities in software development, energy-environment-economy modelling and data science that can be leveraged to support the development and commercialisation of such tools.

The successful candidate will work with senior colleagues across the Ricardo Group to develop and commercialise these new services relating to climate risk analysis.  They will also identify and engage with potential partner organisations that have additional scientific and engineering skillsets complementary to those currently available within the Ricardo and that will be important for increasing the scope and range of services that we can provide to clients in this area.  Having a deep understanding of the role that advanced digital modelling tools can play in analysing and quantifying climate risks will be beneficial; successful candidates will have first-hand experience in scoping out the desired functionality for digital modelling tools in the area of environmental analysis, although it is not a requirement for candidates to have software development skills.

Key competencies and experience

• Demonstrated expertise in climate science and climate risk analysis, focusing on the physical impacts of climate change on society
• Strong network of existing contacts with leading-edge expertise in climate science, public health and relevant engineering topics
• Excellent ability to create new partnerships to leverage complementary scientific, engineering and wider analytical skillsets
• Experience in leading or overseeing the development of digital modelling tools used for analysing indicators relating to climate change and/or other environmental impacts
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree qualifications in a physical science or engineering discipline

Skills and behaviours

• Excellent English-language written and oral communication skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills for engaging with a very wide range of stakeholders from different backgrounds
• Strategic thinker with the ability to see the big picture and use these abilities to create novel solutions
• Strong commercial acumen and focus on customer needs
• Effective and proactive team-worker

Desirable

• Prior experience of working in a consultancy environment is desirable but not essential
• Fluency in a second language

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's 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. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

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 ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

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.