Senior Consultant (Rail Operations)

SYSTRA UK & Ireland; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

SYSTRA UK & Ireland is seeking a Senior Consultant to join a new consultancy-based team focused on rail sector projects. You will deliver project and programme management support, business analysis, and change management across clients and internal teams, shaping transformation and improving delivery outcomes.

You will work across rail-focused workstreams, coordinating with clients and colleagues to ensure governance, timely decisions and successful project delivery.

Qualifications

• Experience in rail sector or comparable transport/operational environment.
• Experience in business analysis, change management, transformation or programme support.
• Experience supporting transformation, change, or continuous improvement initiatives within a complex organisational environment.
• Ability to elicit, analyse and clearly document requirements and translate to recommendations.
• Experience in MoSCoW prioritisation and requirements documentation.
• Experience mapping 'as-is' and 'to-be' processes with narrative support.
• Experience supporting change activities including impact assessments and benefits tracking.
• Strong stakeholder engagement across clients, teams and external partners.
• Ability to coordinate delivery across multiple workstreams in a complex environment.
• Experience producing governance materials (plans, RAID logs, status reports).
• Ability to convert requirements into practical recommendations and delivery plans.
• Knowledge of rail industry operations and processes.
• Significant work experience in a relevant technical discipline.
• Excellent written & verbal communication; ability to analyse complex data.

Responsibilities

• Support rail-related business change, transformation and improvement initiatives.
• Gather, analyse and document requirements and translate into clear specifications and actions.
• Develop process maps to support current and future state assessment.
• Engage stakeholders to support alignment, collaboration and timely decisions.
• Support change activities including impact assessments, planning, and benefits tracking.
• Identify opportunities to improve processes, ways of working and delivery approaches.
• Coordinate project activities, milestones, risks, issues and reporting for delivery.
• Contribute to governance and assurance across projects and programmes.
• Support delivery of projects across SYSTRA teams and clients as required.
• Ensure tasks are delivered to quality, time and budget.
• Interpret and present complex technical information clearly to stakeholders.
• Mentor less experienced colleagues on technical and professional tasks.
• Maintain up-to-date CV records and professional memberships.
• Develop client relationships and initiate sales opportunities within market areas.
• Demonstrate broad-methods knowledge and contribute to new tools and techniques.

Education

Degree level or equivalent experience

Job description

Around the world, SYSTRA's specialists plan, design, integrate, test, commission, project manage and deliver mass transit and mobility solutions that are relied on by more than 50 million people every day. For more than 60 years, the Group has been committed to helping cities and regions contribute to their development by creating, improving and modernising their transport infrastructure with sustainability, accessibility and innovation at the heart of our designs. With over 10,300 colleagues globally and around 1000 in the UK & Ireland we are growing significantly and seeking out the very best talent to join the SYSTRA signature team and be part of leading the way in infrastructure design.

Context

This Senior Consultant role forms part of an exciting new team established to provide consultancy-based project services, offering the opportunity to help shape a growing service while working collaboratively across client organisations and internal teams to deliver projects and change initiatives. The initial focus will be on clients in the rail industry, with scope for this to expand over time. Services offered by the team will include project and programme management, project management office support, business analysis, communications, and business change.

The role holder will utilise their depth of experience to efficiently and comprehensively support the safe delivery of work packages, projects, and proposal development, primarily across the rail sector while working collaboratively across teams and projects as required.

Missions/Main Duties

• Support the delivery of rail-related business change, transformation and improvement initiatives, including client advisory programmes and end to end change programmes.
• Gather, analyse and document business, operational and stakeholder requirements, translating these in to clear specifications, deliverable, actions and recommendations where required.
• Develop process maps and related analysis to support requirements gathering, current and future state assessment and business change activity.
• Facilitate stakeholder engagement across clients, project teams and external partners to support alignment, collaboration and timely decision making.
• Support business change activities including impact assessments, change planning, implementation support and benefits tracking and communication with affected stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities to improve business processes, ways of working, and delivery approaches, contributing to continuous improvement across projects and programmes.
• Coordinate to project and programme coordination activities including management of project activities, milestones, actions, risks, issues, dependencies and reporting requirements to support successful delivery.
• Contribute to governance and assurance activity across projects and programmes, ensuring information is accurate, timely and suitable for client and internal SYSTRA Ltd review.
• Proactively support the delivery of projects of varying scales for a range of systra teams and clients, as required
• Ensure the delivery of complex tasks to quality, time and budget
• Interpret and integrate complex technical information from a number of sources and accurately present conclusions
• Regularly and effectively guide less experienced colleagues on the delivery of technical and professional tasks
• Maintain an accurate record of skills and experience in SYSTRA CV and update as required
• Maintain professional membership of relevant professional institution
• Effectively develop and maintain relationships with client contacts
• Initiate sales opportunities within own market areas, sharing insights with relevant colleagues to maximise business development opportunities
• Demonstrate high-intermediate knowledge in the application of a broad range of methods, techniques and tools
• Develop new tools and techniques in relevant work areas to improve quality and/or effciency
• Takes responsibility for substantial proportions of SYSTRA reports
• Effectively communicate information to internal and external stakeholders to support successful project delivery and business development
• Present technical/project information as required to support the development of colleagues and inform clients
• Demonstrate behaviours aligned with SYSTRA’s behavioural framework by actively fostering a culture of excellence, collaboration, respect, and empowerment, contributing to an environment where all colleagues can thrive, achieve and grow together

Profile/Skills

• Experience working in the rail sector or a comparable transport or operational environment
• Experience working in business analysis, change management, transformation or programme support roles.
• Experience supporting transformation, change, or continuous improvement initiatives within a complex organisational environment.
• Ability to elicit, analyse and clearly document business, operational, stakeholder and user requirements and translate these to recommendations.
• Experience in producing requirements documentation with clear related business, functional and non-functional categorisations and prioritisation using MoSCoW.
• Experience in developing process maps to represent 'as-is' and 'to-be' processes, with supporting process narrative documents where appropriate.
• Experience supporting business change activities, including change impact assessments, implementation support, benefits definition and tracking and clear stakeholder communication.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to work across clients, operational teams, delivery teams, and external partners.
• Ability to coordinate delivery across multiple stakeholders, workstreams or project interfaces in a complex environment.
• Experience of producing project and programme documentation including governance materials such as plans, RAID logs, action trackers and status reporting.
• Ability to gather, interpret, and document business, operational, and client requirements and convert them into practical recommendations and delivery plans.
• Knowledge of rail industry operational environments and processes.
• Significant work experience in a relevant technical discipline or disciplines
• Effective written & verbal communication of complex messages
• Effectively analyse complex data and report on findings
• Effective time management of self and others
• Adaptable to undertake a range of complex tasks to meet varying project requirements
• Relevant Qualification - degree level or equivalent experience.

Workplace Type

Hybrid