Environment jobs in United Kingdom

Closing Date
2025-07-18
Job Title: Senior Catchment Hydrogeology Specialist

Location: Durrington or Falmer, (1-2 days in the office or on-site)

Contract Type: Permanent

Hours: 37 hours per week

Salary: circa £55,000 (depending on skills and experience)

Working within the Environment & Innovation department, a brand-new position has been created for a Senior Catchment Hydrogeology Specialist. This is a critical role at the forefront of Southern Water's drive to enhance and protect the environment, underpinning the implementation of our Catchment Management strategies, which influence our 5 to 50 year strategic plans.

The catchment management programme is driving environmental benefit via the delivery of our regulatory commitments such as the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP) and statutory plans such as the Water Resource Management Plan, Drought Plan and Water Resources South East.

Successful implementation of our WINEP programme directly influences our Environmental Performance Assessment star rating, and abstraction licencing to enable us to abstract water for public water supply. The wider catchment ecological resilience programme contributes to the company meeting its strategic objective of "a constant supply of high quality drinking water" and "looking after the environment".

Job Overview

• Supporting the Principal Catchment Hydrogeology Specialist to deliver the water resource (groundwater) and water quality regulatory programmes in relation to the environment, in particular, leading and supporting implementation, delivery and reporting of our regulatory investigations to understand groundwater abstraction pathways and potential impacts on the environment, impact assessments, groundwater modelling, ecological schemes and compliance requirements.
• Supporting delivery of catchment-scale, sustainable nature-based solution measures that will likely be needed to mitigate predicted environmental challenges from our operations.
• The role will involve strong cross-functional working within and outside the business including with our regulators (Environment Agency, Natural England and DWI), catchment stakeholders (Rivers Trusts, Wildlife Trusts etc) and community groups, driving the principals of the Catchment First approach.
• The technical areas covered by the role will principally involve water resource hydrogeology with additional aspects of hydroecology, groundwater-surface water interaction, biodiversity enhancement, river restoration, catchment management (including soil and water conservation), hydrogeological water quality risk assessment, and surface water/ groundwater quality and quantity assessments.

About You

• Demonstrable expertise in water resource hydrogeology, regulatory WINEP investigations, hydroecology, groundwater modelling, restoring sustainable abstraction, river / wetland restoration, low flow investigation, WFD and other environmental legislation, groundwater resource development.
• Experience of designing and managing implementation of complex hydrogeological, water quality, hydroecology and hydrometric monitoring investigations.
• Experience and skills in technical interpretative report writing and review of water resource (groundwater) investigations, catchment water quality risk assessments, GIS and data analysis.
• Masters degree in relevant discipline such as Hydrogeology is desirable. Chartership or working towards is highly desirable.

Package

This role will be full time Monday to Friday with a hybrid approach to working between our Durrington/Falmer offices, sites and home. We are offering a competitive salary as well as other benefits including:

• Generous pension up to 11% company contribution
• 25 days annual leave
• Life assurance equal to 4x salary
• Salary sacrifice electric car scheme (after 6 months service)
• Health Cash Plan
• Full funded eye tests
• Two paid volunteering days a year
• Occupational health service
• Discounts with over 800 popular retailers
• Digital GP service
• Study support may be available for job-related qualifications
• Competitive maternity leave and flexible return to work options
• Cycle to work scheme

Join our Environment & Innovation team and see how far your career could progress with a company committed to career progression, training and development opportunities, our customers and the environment.

Does this opportunity excite you but you're not 100% sure if you meet all the requirements for the role? Or are you concerned that 'normal' office hours aren't possible given your personal circumstances? Whilst we can't accommodate every flexible working request, we'll try to find a practical solution. So why not engage with us and find out more about this role?

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, because delivering water for life is our core purpose. To achieve this, we need 24/7 support in place to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. All our employees understand the importance of out-of-hours incident support - because when problems appear, fixing them is our top priority. That's why our people join together and support when and however needed to make sure our customers get the service they deserve. Joining the Southern Water family means you'll become part of our incident support team. During your interview, your manager will speak to you about any incident support rotas that apply to your position.

Privacy Statement:

Please note: If you are an existing Southern Water employee, you will need to confirm within your application that your Manager is aware of your application.

All applicants must be eligible to live and work in the UK. You will need to provide evidence of eligibility (e.g. a passport or long birth certificate and proof of NI) and current proof of address (dated within the last 3 months), will be required as part of the recruitment process. If you do not meet these criteria, your application will not be considered.

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