Head of Design

The Vacancy

🌟 Head of Design🌟

📍 Location: Midlands
📁 Business Unit: WPS

✨ About the Role

We’re looking for a highly experienced and inspiring Head of Design to lead and elevate the Design Management function across our WPS business. This pivotal role carries full accountability for ensuring all design activity — including Higher-Risk Buildings (HRBs), retrofit, and planned maintenance programmes — meets the highest levels of technical excellence, safety, and regulatory compliance.

You’ll drive continuous improvement, champion innovation, and strengthen business resilience while leading a talented team of Design Managers and Temporary Works specialists.

If you thrive in a fast-paced technical environment and enjoy shaping best practice across a region-wide portfolio, we want to hear from you! 🚀

What You’ll Do 🚀

• Lead, motivate, and develop a team of Design Managers, ensuring clear standards, robust processes, and ongoing professional development.
• Oversee business-wide design governance, including compliance with the Building Safety Act, CDM 2015 and Golden Thread requirements.
• Approve key design deliverables, providing technical assurance, design risk management and buildability checks.
• Support project delivery teams through gateway reviews, resolving technical issues, and ensuring successful tender-to-handover outcomes.
• Drive continuous improvement, digital design practices, competency frameworks, and in-house technical training.
• Act as the senior escalation point for all design-related matters, working collaboratively with clients, consultants and supply chain partners.

What You’ll Bring 💡

• Chartered Civil/Structural Engineer (15+ years’ Tier 1 contractor experience).
• Strong track record delivering HRBs, remediation, retrofit, and planned maintenance projects.
• Deep knowledge of building safety regulations, design risk management, and digital design tools.
• A collaborative, influential leadership style with the ability to drive standards and performance.

📢 Why Join Us?

This is a rare opportunity to shape the future of Design Management across a major region within WPS. You’ll lead high-impact programmes, work with exceptional people, and play a critical role in ensuring safe, compliant, and innovative delivery across our built environment.

How to Apply 📨

If you’re ready to take the next step and play a key role in shaping design leadership across the WPS business, apply now by submitting your CV and a brief summary of your experience.

Work for Wates

Wates is one of the UK’s leading family-owned development, building and property maintenance companies.  Founded over 125 years ago, we have a proud legacy in the built environment.

We are driven by our purpose, ‘reimagining places for people to thrive’ and our three promises:

• Thriving places – working with customers, partners and communities to create places that are more sustainable, inclusive, and full of opportunity.
• Thriving planet – protecting nature and taking action on climate change by collaborating and innovating with our partners.
• Thriving people – creating opportunities and relationships so that everyone who works for and with us feels included, invested in and treated with care.

We are proud to be recognised as Gold Investors in People and as a Disability Confident employer.  We also ensure that our recruitment processes do not treat anyone less favourably due to an offending background.