Job Description:

NES Fircroft are currently recruiting for a REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals) Programme Manager for our client, who are a global leader in power technology, manufacturing power generation gas turbines in the UK.

Programme Manager
Contract Position
Outside IR35
12-month initial contract
Location: Lincoln                                                                     
Hybrid Working

Role purpose
The Senior Programme Manager will provide overall leadership for the REACH Compliance Programme, an ongoing strategic programme focused on bringing protective coating applications used on aeroderivative gas turbines into compliance with REACH requirements. The role will be responsible for restoring programme control, driving delivery across multiple workstreams, maintaining business continuity, and ensuring effective engagement with regulatory bodies and senior stakeholders.
Reporting line and programme scope
The role reports directly to the Head of EHS and provides oversight across four key programme branches: materials compliance, business continuity, regulations, and transformation. Each branch has dedicated programme management support, with the Senior Programme Manager accountable for overall integration, governance, prioritisation, stakeholder alignment, and delivery assurance.
Key responsibilities

• Take ownership of the overall REACH Compliance Programme and establish clear programme governance, cadence, controls, milestones, and decision-making routes.
• Lead the integration of the four programme branches, ensuring dependencies, risks, actions, resources, and priorities are visible and actively managed.
• Drive the recovery of a complex programme that has lost momentum, creating clarity, pace, accountability, and confidence across internal and external stakeholder groups.
• Ensure product modification plans are delivered in a controlled way that protects customer commitments, operational continuity, and regulatory compliance.
• Challenge delays, pushbacks, and competing priorities constructively while maintaining senior stakeholder confidence and alignment.
• Engage effectively with regulatory bodies and external stakeholders, ensuring programme responses are robust, timely, and professionally managed.
• Provide clear reporting to the Managing Director and senior leadership, highlighting progress, risks, escalations, decisions required, and recovery actions.
• Build trust and credibility across technical, operational, compliance, commercial, and leadership communities to secure commitment to programme outcomes.

Experience and capability requirements

• Proven senior programme management experience, ideally within complex engineering, manufacturing, energy, aerospace, or other highly regulated environments.
• Demonstrable experience managing large portfolios or multi-workstream programmes with significant compliance, technical, operational, and stakeholder complexity.
• Strong understanding of regulatory compliance programmes; direct REACH experience would be highly advantageous.
• Experience maintaining business continuity while delivering product, process, material, or compliance-related change.
• Ability to operate confidently at Managing Director and senior leadership level, providing concise insight, robust challenge, and clear recommendations.
• Track record of leading through ambiguity, recovering challenged programmes, and creating structure where priorities, ownership, or governance are unclear.
• Strong stakeholder management capability, including the ability to influence senior technical experts, operational leaders, regulatory stakeholders, and demanding internal customers.

Leadership profile
This role requires a leader with resilience, and strong judgement. The successful candidate must be comfortable dealing with strong personalities, challenging resistance, and holding stakeholders to account while remaining collaborative and outcome-focused. They must be able to stand firm under pressure, make balanced decisions in the interests of the programme, and maintain momentum in the face of adversity.
Ideal candidate summary
The ideal candidate will be a highly credible Senior Programme Manager with experience delivering complex change in a regulated technical environment. They will combine programme discipline with commercial awareness, regulatory sensitivity, and the confidence to influence at executive level. They will bring the structure, pace, and leadership needed to bring the REACH Programme back under control and deliver a compliant, business-sustaining outcome.

With over 90 years' combined experience, NES Fircroft (NES) is proud to be the world's leading engineering staffing provider spanning the Oil & Gas, Power & Renewables, Chemicals, Construction & Infrastructure, Life Sciences, Mining and Manufacturing sectors worldwide. With more than 80 offices in 45 countries, we are able to provide our clients with the engineering and technical expertise they need, wherever and whenever it is needed. We offer contractors far more than a traditional recruitment service, supporting with everything from securing visas and work permits, to providing market-leading benefits packages and accommodation, ensuring they are safely and compliantly able to support our clients.