Senior Manager, Supply Chain & Operations, Infrastructure

Senior Manager, Supply Chain and Operations, Infrastructure

London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh

The UK government’s “UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy” sets out a long-term, cross-sector plan to drive economic growth, deliver net zero, and improve public services. With a £725 billion commitment, the strategy prioritises stability, private investment, and robust delivery across transport, energy, digital, water, housing, and social infrastructure, giving confidence and direction across the entire supply chain. 

However, infrastructure supply chain and operations are facing unprecedented global uncertainty, risk and volatility.  

Sustainable infrastructure will play a critical role in delivering this strategy and in overcoming these challenges. Building a career in this sector offers diverse opportunities on some of the UK’s most transformational and iconic projects. 

The opportunity 

Take your career to the next level and join a high performing and inclusive team, working collaboratively with some of the largest infrastructure projects in the world as they seek to deliver, operate and transform. Specifically, our teams focus on the following core areas: 

• The initiation and successful delivery of transformation programmes, tackling our clients’ most pressing and complex initiatives  

• Sustainable infrastructure to support the government’s green infrastructure plan and ambition to deliver net zero to the UK 

• The involvement in early stage, large scale infrastructure project development activities, as well as ongoing support, to drive more successful infrastructure project delivery 

We are focused on growing our supply chain capability in the infrastructure market across a wide range of clients within a variety of sectors, including transport, energy, defence, utilities, digital and social infrastructure. 

We value curious thinkers who have the courage to lead, great communicators who do not take themselves too seriously, flexible collaborators who build relationships based on doing the right thing, and innovative problem-solvers who use their experience to ultimately find a better way.  

Your key responsibilities 
Our clients place considerable trust in us and our advice, and people who are passionate about going above and beyond to improve our working world, unifies us as a team. This is crucial in enabling us to consistently deliver or exceed on our commitments. 

As a Senior Manager, you’ll combine deep delivery leadership with commercial ownership, senior client influence, and people leadership – helping shape both client outcomes and the growth of the sustainable infrastructure practice: 

• Own and grow senior client relationships, acting as a trusted advisor across supply chain, operations and/or sustainability in the infrastructure sector, with responsibility for expanding impact and scope 

• Lead major workstreams or multiple workstreams, setting direction, governance and outcomes, and ensuring successful delivery across complex, multi-stakeholder environments 

• Provide senior day-to-day leadership on engagements, steering team performance, resolving delivery challenges, and aligning stakeholders around clear decisions and priorities 

• Set the standard for insight-led client deliverables, ensuring outputs are strategically coherent, decision-oriented and consistently “partner-ready” in quality 

• Take accountability for delivery excellence and risk, anticipating issues early, managing escalation effectively, and protecting quality through robust controls and review 

• Lead leaders (develop Managers and Seniors), building high-performing, inclusive teams, and actively mentoring others to create the next generation of leaders 

• Originate and lead business development activity, including shaping pursuits, leading proposal strategy, and converting pipeline within the infrastructure market 

• Drive practice and capability development, building repeatable assets, methods, and points of view that strengthen our infrastructure supply chain & operations offering 

• Strengthen EY’s profile in the UK (and global) infrastructure market, through thought leadership, external engagement, and account/sector leadership activities  

Your experience 
An understanding of the UK infrastructure sector is critical to this role, whether from experience working in industry, government or a management consultancy environment. Knowledge of one or more of the following sectors is preferred: transport, energy, defence, utilities, digital and social infrastructure. 

Senior Managers are expected to bring strong depth in at least one of the areas below and breadth across several others, including experience leading complex workstreams / multiple workstreams, and operating credibly with senior stakeholders: 

• Shaping and leading operating model, delivery model and transformation programmes in infrastructure or a related sector, through ambiguity and changing priorities 

• Leading commercial and procurement strategy development and execution, including integrating supply chain considerations into delivery and outcomes 

• Advanced contracts capability, including leadership of contracting approaches, negotiation support, and governance of contract performance and change (e.g., NEC, FIDIC, JCT) 

• Leading sourcing / category management and supply chain mapping activity, including setting direction, assuring quality, and driving client decision-making 

• Operations and asset management leadership for major assets and networks, including improvement initiatives and performance management 

• Policy development leadership in infrastructure contexts, including engaging and aligning stakeholders where appropriate 

• Owning and quality assuring HMT Green Book business cases, including strategic alignment, value for money, affordability, and deliverability narratives 

• Designing and leading end-to-end sustainable change programmes, including net zero / net negative transitions and practical implementation pathways 

• Programme and project leadership across traditional and agile environments, including governance design, integrated planning, risk management and benefits realisation 

Qualifications 
Our Senior Managers demonstrate strong written and verbal communication skills and can engage credibly with senior client stakeholders. They are proactive, resilient self-starters who bring strategic judgement, delivery leadership and commercial awareness — shaping high-quality outcomes under time pressure and through ambiguity. They are inclusive leaders who develop other leaders and set the standard for quality across teams and engagements. Specific qualifications you must have are: 

• Experience within the infrastructure or related sector, with depth in at least one of: supply chain, operations, sustainability in an infrastructure context 

• The ability to write to an exceptional standard, whilst being fluent/native in English (additional major languages desirable) 

• Ability to adapt style and approach to suit different contexts and environments, including senior/executive audiences 

• Demonstrable experience leading leaders (e.g., managing Managers / leading multi-workstream teams), with a strong track record of coaching and developing others 

• A willingness to travel and work across the UK and potentially overseas 

What we offer