Principal Engineer

Principal Engineer - Healthcare

Contract: Permanent
Hours of work: 40
Location: Birmingham / Home-based, with regular travel across the North East, East Kilbride, London and Reading

Our client, a leading provider of facilities services in the UK, is seeking a Principal Engineer to provide senior technical leadership across healthcare accounts, ensuring engineering systems, infrastructure and compliance frameworks meet statutory, safety, performance and contractual standards.

This role plays a critical part in supporting safe patient care environments by delivering authoritative engineering leadership aligned to national NHS engineering governance and recognised technical standards. The postholder will act as a trusted technical authority to senior leaders, NHS Trusts and key stakeholders, promoting consistent, high-quality engineering practices across all healthcare environments.

The Principal Engineer will lead assurance activity, investigate complex technical issues and drive continuous improvement. The role requires a confident professional who can challenge poor practice, interpret regulatory requirements and provide clear, evidence-based guidance to support compliance and operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide senior technical leadership across healthcare accounts, ensuring compliance with statutory, safety and contractual requirements
• Interpret compliance gaps and develop rectification and recovery plans for Key Asset Performance Documents (KAPDs)
• Deliver engineering assurance reviews and agree action plans with Account Technical Leads and Key Account Directors
• Lead operational technical investigations and produce clear, evidence-based outcomes
• Produce high-quality engineering reports for SPVs, NHS Trusts and regulatory bodies
• Challenge poor practice and enforce engineering discipline and Safe Systems of Work (SSOW)
• Build and maintain trusted relationships with SPVs, NHS estates teams and clinical stakeholders
• Promote and sustain technical excellence across healthcare engineering environments

Person Specification

• Chartered Engineer (CEng) status through a recognised institution (e.g. IMechE, IET, CIBSE, IHEEM)
• Strong experience working within healthcare engineering environments
• Proven ability to interpret NHS, governmental and technical regulations
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to assess risk and identify non-compliance
• Ability to develop proportionate, compliant solutions to complex technical issues
• Capability to read, analyse and produce procedural and operational documentation
• Confidence to challenge poor practice and influence senior stakeholders
• Full UK driving licence, with willingness to travel regularly to client sites