Fire Engineer

Fire Engineer – Manchester (Hybrid) | Fire Strategy & Fire Safety Engineering Careers

Location: Manchester (Hybrid — 2–3 days in office) Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience + benefits package Hours: Full-time, flexible working

Around half a decade ago, this fire engineering consultancy was a handful of engineers with a shared frustration: too many fire safety careers are built on rigid hierarchies, endless overtime, and compliance-box-ticking rather than genuine engineering judgement. So they decided to build something different.

Today that team has grown nearly fourfold, split across two fast-scaling offices, with plans to open in further UK cities and launch further divisions in the coming months. Working out of Manchester allows exposure to a genuinely varied stock of high-profile, complex projects. With growth still very much underway, it's the kind of environment where a capable engineer can carve out a specialism and take on real responsibility early, rather than waiting years for a seat to open up.

The role

You'll join a technically strong team delivering fire strategies across residential, commercial, heritage, healthcare and sports-ground projects. Working through the full lifecycle from concept design and code-compliance strategies through to performance-based solutions, site inspections, and computational modelling. You'll be mentored day-to-day by Chartered Fire Engineers, with genuine investment in getting you to chartership, not just a box on a training matrix.

What you'll actually be doing:

• Developing fire strategies using both prescriptive and performance-based approaches across a genuinely varied sector mix
• Producing clear technical reports: assumptions, basis of design, methodology, recommendations
• Getting out on site for inspections, not just sat behind a desk
• Managing your own projects, deadlines and budgets as your confidence grows
• Working towards Chartered Engineer (CEng) status with structured CPD support
• Supporting junior and graduate engineers as you progress — this is a team that mentors up and down, not just top-down
• Staying close to industry developments and contributing to internal knowledge-sharing, and in time, external publications and conference contributions

What we're looking for

• A BSc, BEng or higher in fire engineering or a closely related engineering discipline
• 2-4 years' fire engineering experience
• Strong numerical and problem-solving ability, and a genuine interest in performance-based design rather than just prescriptive compliance
• Comfortable working across a multidisciplinary project team
• AIFireE (Associate, Institution of Fire Engineers) desirable but not essential

What you'll get

• Hybrid working — typically 2–3 days in the office, with genuine flexibility around how that works for you
• A real training budget — a dedicated annual training allowance per person, plus a personal growth plan agreed directly with your line manager, not a generic CPD checklist
• One of the best holiday/ working splits in the industry, scaling with your experience
• Company bonus scheme, enhanced pension, life assurance, and an Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Professional membership subscriptions paid for you
• An operations team behind the scenes handling the admin, travel and training logistics, so you can focus on the engineering
• Regular company social events and a genuinely tight-knit, growing team culture

Why now

Joining a business at this stage of its growth is rare — you get the technical rigour and mentorship of an established practice with the pace, autonomy and career runway of a business that's still being built. If you want to shape a fire engineering career on your own terms rather than fit into someone else's mould, this is a great time to get onboard.

To apply or find out more (in full confidence), contact: Alex Parsons, 1st Select: M: (phone number removed) Specialist Fire Engineering & Building Safety Recruitment