Compliance and Nuclear Safety Lead

Atomic Weapons Establishment; Reading; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

270 hours annual leave

Market-leading pension scheme

Family-friendly policies

Professional career development

Employee assistance programme

Life assurance (4x salary)

Discounts on everyday spending

Special leave policy

Job summary

Atomic Weapons Establishment invites applications for a Compliance and Nuclear Safety Lead based on site at Aldermaston, Reading. The role focuses on delivering safe, compliant operations, maintaining credible safety justifications, and ensuring regulatory alignment across the Business Unit.

You will own the safety case strategy, manage regulatory interfaces, and lead governance on nuclear risk management, extracting lessons from incidents and driving continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Requires deep understanding of nuclear safety and environmental health obligations.
• Ability to interpret regulatory expectations and apply them proportionally across the business unit.
• Proven track record leading safety case development and regulatory interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and maintenance of Nuclear Safety, conventional safety, and underpinning safety justifications.
• Ensure safety cases remain current and aligned with facility configuration and planned change.
• Provide assurance of compliance with Nuclear Site Licence Conditions and environmental permits.
• Own governance for safety justification, risk management, and regulatory interactions.
• Coordinate regulators, inspections, and formal correspondence; drive issue resolution and continuous improvement.

Skills

Nuclear safety

Regulatory compliance

Stakeholder engagement

Governance

Leadership

Education

Nuclear engineering degree

Job description

**Compliance and Nuclear Safety Lead****Location:** **Aldermaston, Reading****Working pattern:** AWE operates a 9-day working fortnight, with **every other Friday as a non-working day**. For this role, employees are required to work fully onsite. We support flexible working arrangements where possible, including part-time and varied working hours, while maintaining an onsite presence. Please let us know if you would like us to consider an alternative working pattern as part of your application.**Let us introduce the role**AWE is currently recruiting a Compliance and Nuclear Safety Lead to enable safe, compliant, and efficient delivery and ensuring assets and operations remain credible over the short, medium, and long term.**What you’ll do:*** Lead the development, integration, and maintenance of the Nuclear Safety, conventional safety, and underpinning safety justifications for the Business Unit.* Ensure safety cases remain current, coherent, and aligned to operational configuration, facility condition, and planned change.* Provide authoritative advice to Business Unit leadership on safety case adequacy, margins, constraints, and limitations.* Hold Business Unit accountability for compliance against Nuclear Site Licence Conditions, Authorisation Conditions, environmental permits, and conventional safety legislation.* Provide assurance that business unit operations are delivered safely and in full compliance with nuclear, environmental, health, safety, security, and quality requirements.* Own interpretation and application of regulatory expectations within the Business Unit, ensuring proportionality and consistency.* Act on behalf of the Duty Holder for governance, permissioning and assurance of operations at the Nuclear Safety Justification level.* Enable and evidence Collective Competence and SQEP arrangements across the Business Unit.* Ensure appropriate, demonstrable governance and management arrangements are in place and effective.* Serve as the principal regulatory interface for the Business Unit.* Lead engagement with nuclear, environmental, and conventional safety regulators, including inspections, interventions, and formal correspondence.* Build credible, transparent relationships that support early alignment, reduced regulatory friction and effective issue resolution.* Define, own, and lead the Business Unit Nuclear Risk Management programme.* Ensure nuclear risks are clearly identified, owned, mitigated, and integrated into Business Unit decision‐making and planning.* Provide clear escalation and advice on emerging safety or regulatory risks.* Compile, maintain and present Strategic Long‐Term Operability summaries, providing an integrated view of safety justification health, regulatory risk, facility condition, and future operability.* Ensure Strategic Long-term Operability insight informs investment decisions, prioritisation, recovery plans, and future capability introduction.* Lead compliance and assurance against environmental and sustainability obligations, embedding responsible stewardship of nuclear materials, assets, and liabilities across their life cycle.* Provide independent, authoritative challenge while remaining delivery‐enabling and risk‐informed.* Promote a strong nuclear safety and compliance culture, empowering teams to constructively challenge weakness or vulnerability.* Support incident response, learning, assurance activities, and continuous improvement.* Coordinate specialists and stakeholders across safety, engineering, operations, and assurance to maintain alignment between safety justification, operational reality, and future intent.* Monitor indicators, trends and emerging issues across compliance, nuclear risk, asset condition, and regulatory performance, escalating concerns early and advising on proportionate action.* Prepare robust evidence, briefing and responses for governance forums, internal assurance activity, and regulatory interactions, ensuring information is accurate, coherent, and timely.* Drive timely resolution of compliance gaps, regulatory findings, safety case shortfalls, and operability concerns through clear ownership, prioritisation, and follow-through.* Integrate long-term operability, sustainability and lifecycle considerations into day-to-day decision-making, recovery planning, investment choices, and future capability planning.* Coach and influence leaders, managers and specialists to build regulatory maturity, strengthen collective competence and embed a culture of constructive challenge and learning.* Support incident response, recovery, and continuous improvement by identifying lessons, shaping corrective actions, and tracking delivery through to closure.**Some reasons we think you’ll love it here**AWE has wide range of benefits to suit you. These include:* **270 hours of annual leave.*** **Market leading contributory pension scheme** (we will pay between 9% and 13% of your pensionable pay depending on your contributions).* **Family friendly policies:** Maternity Leave - 39 Weeks Full Pay and Paternity Leave - 4 Weeks Full Pay.* Opportunities for **Professional Career Development** including funding for annual membership of a relevant professional body.* **Employee Assistance Programme** and Occupational Health Services.* **Life Assurance** (4 x annual salary).* **Discounts** – access to savings on a wide range of everyday spending.* **Special Leave Policy** including paid time off for volunteering, public service (including reserve forces) and caring.The **'Working at AWE' page** on our website is where you can find full details in the **'AWE Benefits Guide'.****Important things you need to know:*** You will need to obtain and maintain the necessary security clearance for the role. This will be funded by AWE. **The nature of our work does mean you need to be a British Citizen who has been resident in the UK for the past 5 years to apply for SC clearance and 10 years for DV.*** Our interviews typically take place over Teams and for most roles are a 1 stage process.* We want you to feel comfortable and able to shine during our recruitment process. Please let us know on your application form if you need any adjustments/accommodations during the process.Our ambition is to create workplaces where we recognise and celebrate differences, encourage diverse contributions and our employees feel able to be themselves at work. We strive to create a genuine culture of openness and inclusion and encourage diverse applicants. Any inclusion information you provide will be stored in accordance with GDPR and kept separate from your application form and CV, and the information will not be shared with anyone involved in interviewing or making hiring decisions.#LI-JW1**Next steps:**Everyone who works at AWE brings unique skills and perspectives to the table. We recognise that great people don’t always ‘tick every box’. That’s why we focus on your potential, your fit with our values, your transferable skills as well as your experience. Even if you don’t meet every point above, but you feel that this role and AWE are a great fit for you, please go ahead and apply, we’d love to receive your application.**Important things you need to know:*** We encourage you to apply promptly to avoid disappointment if applications are high and the role therefore closes.* You will need to obtain and maintain the necessary security clearance for the role. This will be funded by AWE. **The nature of our work does mean you need to be a British Citizen who has been resident in the UK for the past 5 years in order to apply for SC clearance and 10 years for DV.*** **We want you to feel comfortable and able to shine during our recruitment process. Please let us know on your application form if you need any adjustments/accommodations during the process.*** Our interviews typically take place over Teams and for most roles are a 1 stage process.Our ambition is to create workplaces where we recognise and celebrate differences, encourage diverse contributions and our employees feel able to be themselves at work. We strive to create a genuine culture of openness and inclusion and encourage diverse applicants. Any inclusion information you provide will be stored in accordance with GDPR and kept separate from your application form and CV, and the information will not be shared with anyone involved in interviewing or making hiring decisions.Please note that you must be a British Citizen to apply for a role with us.