Overview

Senior / Principal Ecologist – Guildford or London based            RefNo: 12982

Want to work in a progressive team? Looking for a varied workload? Ambitious and capable

As a consultancy of approximately 1,600 staff, we are large enough to work on high-profile schemes in the South East region including Ashford and St Peter’s Hospital, The Pirbright Institute, Brookfield residential scheme and the team has a strong track record locally – including award winning schemes such as Cliffe Pools. We also deliver smaller schemes to give you a wide variety of work across all sectors.

Our south east team operate from two offices, London and Guildford, therefore there is flexability to be based in either of these offices.

While we have introduced methods for maximising quality and consistency across WYG, we have adapted these to suit the ecologists, allowing us to react quickly (important given the seasonality of our work) and to allow team members to make decisions about their own projects with timely support from the senior management team.

We are looking for an Ecologist who has experience of projects across a diversity of sectors, with the confidence to liaise directly with both clients and stakeholders and the desire to manage and mentor other members of the team. Strong general technical skills are a must and experience with EcIA, HRA and mitigation licences for Bats and GCN are highly desirable.

We are keen to continue to grow the team and a key part of this role will be to develop and build the London client base, therefore enthusiasm to support and be actively involved in our business development strategy is a must.

As experienced ecologists, we understand how ecologists think and work and have introduced ecology-specific methods to allow the team to fulfil their potential:

  • With over 60 permanent ecologists across 12 offices, we work hard to operate as one cohesive team to minimise time away from home, maximise bespoke training and support from our in-house experts regardless of location, and to allow the best people to work on the projects that interest them and deliver them to the highest standards.
  • We encourage the development of well-rounded ecologists who can talk about all stages of a project rather than a niche area.  We don’t automatically pigeon-hole ecologists and instead encourage diversification of skills and the passing on of knowledge to fellow ecologists.  We recently held our annual all-ecology get-together over two days where our in-house experts provided training, licensing and technology updates to help us all operate to the same standards
  • Given that all grades of ecologist complete site visits and meetings, we provide cars or car allowances to every member of the team, including for personal use.
  • Our bat handling licence incentivisation scheme thanks those ecologists who spend time and effort in achieving their licence – we know it’s not easy!  And to show our support of personal development, we award a significant financial bonus to anyone achieving Chartered Environmentalist status through CIEEM.
  • We work closely with many other WYG teams, including Planners, Archaeologists, Landscape Architects, Masterplanners and Engineers.  With a culture of openness, there is always someone within the business who can provide advice and support for almost any query.
  • We also have an established TOIL system which allows ecologists to manage their time to suit their specific personal needs, alongside the seasonal demands of the role. 

If the timing’s not quite right for you, please do still to get in touch as we will always consider bespoke working arrangements or deferred start date to attract good people.

WYG is an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, transgender status, religion or belief, marital status, or pregnancy and maternity.