Lead Earthing & Bonding Engineer

Lead Earthing & Bonding Engineer The Opportunity We're recruiting a technical leader for one of the UK's most significant infrastructure programmes. As Lead Earthing & Bonding Engineer, you'll own the electrical safety strategy across a multi-billion pound scheme, developing and embedding earthing and bonding approaches that protect critical infrastructure and enable safe integration across hundreds of kilometres of complex systems.
This isn't a routine technical role. Your decisions will influence whole-life costs, protect public safety, and define how the entire programme approaches grounding architecture, bonding strategy, and electrical continuity. You'll work alongside equally experienced technical leaders—including our Lead EMC Engineer  who shares responsibility for related electrical systems integration challenges.
What You'll Be Doing You'll lead the Earthing & Bonding discipline as the recognised technical authority, developing and embedding electrical safety strategies across all project phases.
Technical Leadership

• Develop earthing and bonding strategies that meet BS 7909, IEC 61936, and railway safety regulations
• Define specifications and standards that guide design teams and contractors
• Assure compliance and resolve complex technical challenges where earthing, bonding, EMC, and power systems interact
• Lead peer reviews and technical governance processes
• Shape whole-life cost through value engineering and innovative bonding approaches

Strategic Impact

• Manage professional services budget and oversee consultant performance on earthing and bonding deliverables
• Interface with utilities, network operators, and regulators on electrical safety coordination
• Drive adoption of best practice in grounding and bonding design (including TPLS, fault loop impedance analysis, earth mat design)
• Work across integrated engineering teams on power systems, M&E, and infrastructure
• Champion emerging techniques and innovation in earthing and bonding systems

Collaboration & Systems Integration

• Partner closely with the Lead EMC Engineer to ensure complementary strategies—earthing and EMC are fundamentally interconnected. Poor earthing creates EMC problems; EMC requirements drive bonding strategies.
• Work across integrated engineering teams on power systems, signalling, communications, and infrastructure
• Present complex technical concepts to senior stakeholders, contractors, and external regulators
• Coach and develop engineering capability in your discipline
• Lead interface management between earthing/bonding and related electrical disciplines

Who We're Looking For You're a Chartered Engineer with deep expertise in earthing, bonding, and power systems electrical safety. You've spent 15+ years building technical mastery and leading discipline teams on large, complex infrastructure projects.
Your Technical Background

• Chartered Engineer with specialist knowledge of earthing design, bonding strategies, electrical safety, ground systems, earth electrodes, and equipotential bonding
• Practical experience with power system design, HV systems, substation earthing, and grounding architectures
• Understanding of how earthing and bonding requirements interact with EMC, signalling, and other systems
• Familiarity with BS 7909, IEC 61936, CDM regulations, and Common Safety Method (CSM) frameworks
• Track record of developing technical specifications, standards, and bonding strategies (including TPLS, fault loop impedance analysis, earth mat design)
• 15 or more years' experience building technical mastery

Your Project Experience

• Led discipline teams on major, multi-billion pound infrastructure projects with complex power and electrical systems
• Worked as Technical Authority or Discipline Lead on complex integrated programmes involving earthing, bonding, power distribution, utilities, or railway power systems
• Successfully managed competing engineering, cost, and schedule demands with focus on whole-life cost and value engineering
• Ideally: Railway experience (Network Rail, HS1, London Underground), utility systems, power distribution, or substation design background

Your Leadership Profile

• Proven ability to inspire and influence teams at senior levels across multi-disciplinary environments
• Comfortable in matrix organisations, setting technical direction without direct authority
• Strategic thinker who balances technical rigour with practical delivery and commercial awareness
• Excellent communicator who translates complex electrical engineering, standards, and technical governance to non specialists
• Resilient and agile in rapidly changing programme environments with competing priorities
• Growth mindset: mentor talent, drive innovation, and champion standards development

What Makes This Role Special You'll work at the intersection of safety, systems integration, and transformational infrastructure delivery. Unlike routine earthing and bonding roles, this position offers genuine technical authority on a project that will define engineering practice for decades. Your work will directly influence whole-life costs and safety outcomes across millions of pounds of infrastructure.
You'll partner with the Lead EMC Engineer—a peer relationship, not a hierarchical one. These two disciplines are interdependent, and your collaboration will be essential to the programme's success. You'll join a technically mature environment where engineering excellence is expected and valued.
About the Wider Team You won't be working alone. You'll be part of a technical leadership group that includes specialist leads across power systems, signalling, structures, and other disciplines. The Lead EMC Engineer works closely with you—these roles are deliberately paired because earthing/bonding and EMC strategies must align. We're recruiting both simultaneously, and we're looking for two specialists who understand the intersection and can collaborate effectively at a peer level.