Senior Criticality Consultant

Consilium Recruit are proudly supporting and partnering with the National Nuclear Laboratory to recruit Criticality Consultants. Working in the Safety, Security & Safeguards team, you will support this prestigious organisation to use nuclear energy and nuclear science to benefit society. The roles have a flexible base and such you can be based at one of the following locations: Windscale (Sellafield), Workington, Preston or Risley.


Commutable from:  Sellafield, Workington, Cockermouth, Broughton in Furness, Barrow in Furness, Keswick

Salary: to circa £ 67,000 p.a. plus an exceptional suite of benefits including:

• Sector leading Family-Focused Policies: celebrate life events, including enhanced maternity and paternity leave and a week off for your marriage.
• NNL offers attractive pension plans. If you contribute 5%, NNL contributes 15%. Alternatively, if you choose not to contribute (0%), NNL will still contribute 10%.
• Annual Leave: Benefit from 25.5 days of leave, plus 4 extra days to be taken during Christmas shutdown, plus Bank Holidays.
• Reduced gym membership with discounts of up to 25% from 3,700 gym and leisure providers across the UK
• Company Bonus
• Learning Opportunities: Enhance your skills through excellent development programmes.
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Life Assurance:
• Enhanced Sick Pay Benefits
• Access to ‘Mydiscounts’ which has a range of exclusive offers and discounts from more than 200 suppliers, including medical insurance and dental insurance. 
• Health Care: Health savings plan which allows you to claim money back on visits to the dentist, optician, and/or physiotherapist (limits apply).

The Role

The Criticality Consultants will focus on the delivery of new developments, from advanced modular reactors, clean energy, nuclear medicine, new fuel types, new reprocessing processes in addition to supporting the existing sites and processes, including decommissioning. 

NNL is leading these developments and as a result needs to maintain a position at the forefront of developments in criticality safety assessment. The criticality team at NNL provides criticality safety advice and assessment for their own activities, in addition to several customers across different licensed sites.

The are are looking for a dedicated criticality specialist to take on the technical leadership of Criticality Safety Assessment within NNL. Additionally, you will lead the development of NNL’s capability in this area to support their facilities and focus areas and current and future customers. 

This will involve liaison and collaboration with customers and other organisations as well as the development and oversight of the activities under the Core Science Theme. You will also enhance technical skills within the Criticality area and support development of team member's skills and capability and lead activities in support of the development of NNL's national reputation in the criticality area.

Key functions of this role will include:

• Building a wide range of relationships from safety, technical and delivery teams in NNL, the NNL Focus Area leads, customers and external specialists in the field of criticality safety.
• The shaping, guiding, and reviewing of the technical delivery of projects to ensure they achieve agreed objectives.
• Leading the development of any relevant technology and the capability and skills of safety assessors.
• Representing NNL on relevant national forums.
• Understanding of the stakeholders within NNL, its customers, regulators and beyond.
• Leading technical delivery of projects in the criticality area to time, cost, quality, value, and service requirements (working independently). Customers may include any UK civil or defence nuclear facility or operator (including NNL laboratories.
• Leading NNL’s criticality support consultancy to external customers.
• Provide expert knowledge of criticality safety assessment including being up to date with developments in methodology and approach. National level subject matter expert.
• Leading criticality support to multi-disciplinary teams addressing safety challenges.
• Developing team SQEP skills for Criticality, e.g., mentoring and supervision. Design and deliver specialist criticality training.
• Membership of relevant national industry groups to represent NNL.

You will have experience that gives examples of how you have successfully delivered to the required time, cost, and quality meeting the customer expectations.

The location of this role is flexible and can be based at Sellafield, Workington, Preston or Risley. The organisation is highly supportive of flexible working and this role is available in blended hybrid working format, contractually.


The Person

The successful candidates will be Degree qualified or equivalent level of demonstrable technical capability and highly conversant with SQEP 3 with demonstrable experience in criticality safety.

You will have excellent level of knowledge in the specialised field of criticality safety assessment and possess detailed knowledge of advanced assessment techniques.

The Criticality Consultant will be a skilled and effective communicator who is both data-savvy and passionate about the utmost standard of safety and compliance.

Previous experience in the nuclear sector is essential in addition to the ability to undertake occasional travel to internal NNL sites and external customer sites.

To apply, please contact James Colley with a current CV via email.