HEAD OF ENGINEERING

About Fishbone

We’re an engineering solutions provider to the transport, energy and infrastructure sectors. Founded in 2012, we’re independently owned and are led by a team of forward-thinking engineers who thrive on the possibilities of innovation and data technology to turn complex challenges into cost-effective solutions.

The role

We’re looking for a Head of Engineering to lead our combined Engineering and Design function.

This is a senior leadership role with responsibility for the people, engineering resources and delivery performance and capability behind a varied portfolio of technically challenging projects.

The Head of Engineering will have overall responsibility for Engineering and Design delivery across the portfolio, from understanding future demand and supporting new opportunities through to ensuring projects have the people, capability, planning and technical disciplines required to deliver successfully.

The role combines people leadership, engineering delivery, portfolio management and commercial awareness. It will suit somebody who is equally comfortable developing an engineering team, reviewing a portfolio of live projects, challenging delivery assumptions and supporting the business in determining how new work can be successfully delivered.

This is a senior leadership appointment with significant scope to shape the Engineering function, and we are open to candidates whose experience has been gained through different technical and leadership career paths.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the Engineering function
• Lead the combined Engineering and Design team
• Establish clear objectives, responsibilities and expectations across the function
• Develop a strong culture of engineering ownership, accountability and delivery
• Lead recruitment, development and succession planning
• Identify capability gaps against current and future workload
• Develop technical specialists and future engineering leaders
• Ensure people have the appropriate support, tools and development to perform effectively.

Engineering Delivery Management

• Maintain oversight of the complete engineering workload across the business
• Plan Engineering resource and capacity against current projects and forecast demand
• Set priorities and resolve competing requirements for engineering resource
• Ensure projects have appropriately skilled engineering resources and clearly defined engineering ownership
• Maintain visibility of engineering milestones, commitments, risks and delivery performance
• Intervene early where engineering delivery is moving away from plan
• Work across teams as required to resolve issues affecting successful delivery.

Engineering Business and Pipeline Development

• Act as the principal Engineering interface into Business Development and commercial activity
• Provide Engineering input into proposals, estimates, quotations and customer discussions
• Ensure engineering scope, resource, timescale and technical risk are sufficiently understood before commitments are made
• Challenge assumptions where proposed work is not adequately defined or resourced
• Maintain visibility of the forward opportunity pipeline and translate this into Engineering resource and capability requirements.

Engineering Resource and Competence Management

• Work with the Chief Engineer to translate the Company’s technical strategy into practical capability
• Identify future skills, specialist knowledge, systems, tools and resources required by the business
• Improve Engineering processes and ways of working
• Ensure engineering standards and governance are embedded within project delivery
• Promote effective design review, verification, checking and technical assurance
• Capture lessons from delivery and ensure they lead to practical improvements.

Skills and expertise:

We’re interested in candidates who can demonstrate experience appropriate to the scope of the role. This may have been gained through different career routes, and we are more interested in the breadth, scale and relevance of experience than a prescribed number of years, for example:

• Leading and developing multidisciplinary Engineering and Design teams
• Taking responsibility for engineering delivery across multiple concurrent projects or a significant portfolio
• Resource, capacity and capability planning
• Balancing engineering priorities across competing project requirements
• Engineering input to bids, estimates, scope definition and customer commitments
• Working across engineering, project, operational and commercial teams
• Engineering design, review, verification and change within a controlled engineering environment
• Developing people and technical capability, not simply managing today’s workload
• Operating credibly with senior leadership, customers and experienced technical specialists.

Experience within rail, machinery, mechanical systems, infrastructure or another safety-conscious engineering environment would be beneficial but is not essential where the candidate can demonstrate relevant transferable experience.

A relevant engineering degree, apprenticeship or equivalent practical experience is expected. Professional registration such as IEng or CEng, or demonstrable progress towards registration, would be welcomed.

The person we’re looking for:

• Takes ownership and follows issues through to resolution
• Creates clarity when priorities compete
• Is comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
• Asks the right questions before committing Engineering resource
• Develops people while maintaining clear expectations
• Communicates comfortably with engineers, project teams, customers and senior leadership
• Understands when to get into the detail and when to allow others to lead it
• Combines practical engineering judgement with strong organisational discipline.

Why Fishbone?

At Fishbone we’re always on the hunt for talents people who share our drive and ambition to be at the forefront of technology innovation. In return, we offer the support of an amazing team, a range of additional benefits and the opportunity to develop your career with us:

• Hybrid and flexible working options
• Support towards gaining professional status in your chosen path
• Generous holiday allowance and a family-friendly culture
• Social events and plenty of networking opportunities
• A competitive package with the opportunity for progression
• A workplace with values equity and activity recruits without regards for gender, race, culture or ethnicity.

In this role you can also expect:

An opportunity to take leadership of Engineering at an important point in the development of the business:

• Shaping a newly combined Engineering and Design function
• Influencing how the function is organised and developed
• Building capability around Fishbone’s future project portfolio
• Working closely with senior Company leadership
• Influencing projects from initial opportunity through to delivery
• Developing both technical-leadership and engineering-management career paths
• Helping shape the systems, standards and ways of working used by the Engineering team.

We’re looking for someone who has the genuine scope to shape the future development of the Engineering function, building its capability, ways of working and delivery approach around the needs of the business and its growing project portfolio.

How to apply

Please send your CV with covering letter to go-fish@fishbonesolutions.co.uk by 18th December 2026