Waste Management – Senior Permitting Specialist (Air/Waste)

Are you passionate about environmental protection and skilled in ensuring regulatory compliance? As a Senior Permitting Specialist in our Waste Management team, you’ll play a crucial role in supporting our commitment to environmental sustainability. By ensuring our permits align with the latest environmental standards, you’ll help us minimize emissions to land, air, and water while driving our compliance with the Environmental Permitting Regulations and Industrial Emissions Directive.

What you’ll be doing as a Waste Management – Senior Permitting Specialist (Air/Waste)

• Acting as a subject matter expert on environmental permitting, particularly for Air and Waste Emissions, supporting compliance with the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) and Anaerobic Digestion permit requirements.
• Leading permit applications and variations, ensuring they are accurate, thorough, and submitted on time.
• Collaborating with stakeholders, including the Environment Agency, consultants, and contractors, to negotiate and deliver compliant, cost-effective environmental permits.
• Interpreting and implementing guidance on Best Available Techniques, Odour Management, LDAR, Bioaerosols, and process emissions.
• Providing technical advice on complex permitting challenges and guiding our engineering teams to ensure compliance with environmental regulations.
• Supporting our Capital Investment Programmes by anticipating how regulatory changes could impact future projects.

Base location: Clearwater Court, Reading. This is a hybrid role with occasional travel to operational sites to ensure compliance or meet with regulators.

What you should bring into the role

• Qualifications and skills: A degree (or equivalent) in a scientific or environmental discipline.
• Experience in environmental permitting, including knowledge of relevant regulations, Best Available Techniques, and Environment Agency guidance.
• Technical expertise in operational processes such as Anaerobic Digestion, emissions to air and water, and waste management regulations.
• Experience in stakeholder engagement to liaise effectively with regulators, contractors, and internal stakeholders.
• Attention to detail, analytical thinking, and the ability to interpret and present complex information.

What’s in it for you?

• Competitive salary from £43,120 to £55,000 per annum, depending on skills and experience.
• Annual Leave - 26 days holiday per year increasing to 30 with the length of service. (Plus bank holidays)
• Contributory pension – Defined Contribution - Maximum of 12% -2x employee contribution.
• Personal Medical Assessments – Open to all once a year.
• Wider benefits scheme including our benefits hub, which is packed full of offers and information to save you money and support your wellbeing.

Who are we?

At Thames Water, our purpose is crystal clear - to deliver life’s essential service so our customers, communities and planet can thrive.

Water is life’s great leveller. Every living thing needs it, every single day. From people to plants, birds to bees, farms to factories, we all need it to thrive, and we’re committed to taking care of it for us all.

But keeping water flowing is becoming harder. From scorching summers to wetter winters, extreme weather affects everything from our pipes to our local rivers. We need to keep millions more kettles boiling, public services operating, washing machines spinning, showers running and more, so every drop is more precious than ever. Are you ready to play your part?

Working at Thames Water

At Thames Water, we recognise that people are at the heart of our business. To help us succeed in providing life's essential service, we need a range of skills and capabilities, representative of society throughout our business.

We seek to attract and retain a cultural mix of people who can offer different but complementary attitudes, values, talents, and knowledge. We understand the importance of appreciating and harnessing the unique skills, experiences, backgrounds, and differences that each individual brings.

Our over-arching diversity and inclusion aim is to ensure Thames Water is a diverse and inclusive great place to work. We encourage applications from everyone and offer extra support for those who need it throughout the recruitment process.

Find out more about working at Thames Water.

When a crisis happens, we all rally around to support our customers. As part of Team Thames, you’ll have the opportunity to sign up to support our customers on the frontline as an ambassador. Full training will be given for what is undoubtedly an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about our business, meet colleagues and earn some extra money along the way.

Disclaimer: due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.