Our mission is to break down the barriers of today to release the potential of tomorrow. Join us today and release yours.

There are two things that we want to share with anyone considering joining us.

Firstly, we’ve got big ambitions for our colleagues and the future of the organisation. These include our vision that inclusion and accessibility drive every conversation we have and every decision we make. We want our workforce to fully represent the communities and customers we serve, because a diverse business is a better business. We value every colleague, their diversity and the contribution that they make. When we say you’re welcome at Openreach, we really mean it.

Secondly, the one thing the pandemic has taught us is that a lot of current and future colleagues, where and when possible, want to embrace hybrid working. Therefore, we are introducing smart working at Openreach. Smart working means having the flexibility to choose, as a team, how and where you work depending on your team’s deliverables and needs; when you are at your shared core location to connect with others and when not. It may not be for every role, and, as part of the recruitment process, you’ll have the chance to discuss smart working and how it might work for the job you are applying for.

About this role

The key purpose of the Senior Engineering Optimisation Manager role is to support the Director of Region by providing strategic direction and operational opportunities across a very large and complex operational 

team. Manage a complex network of relationships with other units supporting the region’s operational  delivery, ensuring that service is provided at a regional level to our customers at all time.

A key aspect of  the role will be implementing the operational & cultural strategies agreed with the Director of Region and providing the insight & analytics that make this a reality. 

The role holder will also be instrumental in understanding the potential risks to the region’s performance  and quickly acting to prevent operational weaknesses impacting customer delivery and non-delivery of  regulatory commitments.

The role holder will also own the regions analytical capability ensuring  information is effectively and easily communicated to the operational teams so they can take tangible actions to drive performance and cultural change.

You'll have the following responsibilities

Strategic expert working alongside the Director of Region to craft the region’s short, medium and long term plans. Utilising historic and current insight, understanding of threats and opportunities to inform the regions areas of focus for improved customer delivery. Responsible for recommendations & plans provided to Director of Region for decision. Accountable for the end to end service delivery in the region, influencing a large scale operational field engineering team of up to 3,400 FTE with revenues of £700M+ (including line rentals) and a cost base of circa £140M. 

Responsible, in unison with Production Planning, to inform & define the UK Operations central strategy n & then own and successfully execute locally taking into consideration regional differences. 

Responsible for insight & direction provided to the region, ensuring it is useable, tangible and  consumable in the field. Alongside this provide a consultative insight function for operational SOMs to  support them in identifying individual opportunity and supporting their contribution to delivery of regional goals/objectives. Lead region’s analytic capability.

Enable the Director of Region to effectively performance manage the region within the ‘Our Performance’ principle by providing usable insight and concise information that exposes bandwidths and opportunities. 

Own the relationship with operational partners such as RTWF, FDT & DCOE. Driving collaboratively to  ensure optimum delivery and challenge on stakeholder performance. Ensure all operational units are aligned to the region’s objectives. 

Work with Production Planning as part of the wider localisation programme to ensure tasks that are  best suited are held within the production planning and tasks best suited to decentralisation are owned by the SEOM. SEOMs & PP define the framework within which this operates. 

Responsible for change implementation within the region in a sustainable & engaging manner. Working with the UK Operations change team to influence how we deliver and land change, challenging where important information needed for effective messaging in the field, such as the ‘why & benefits’ is not presence. Be the business’s conscious preventing ‘change saturation’ and subsequent failure to realise the benefit. After hand off from transformation & projects leads is complete own plan for establishing change as BAU. 

Ability to identify and share best practise from own regions with the wider SEOM community and devise a plan to ensure benefit is realised across UK Operations. SEOMs should be proactively bringing to peer group to deliver maximum benefit as quickly as possible. 

Identify and drive further integration between Field, Frames, New Recruits & Network Solutions, and wider Openreach teams such as FND, to create a synergised Regional Delivery Unit geared towards great customer service regardless of where the task originates and what is needed to complete. 

Detailed understanding and knowledge of ‘people, network and customers’ with ability to take on issues / escalations and pass information through the operation in a digestible way.

Understand and drive the Director of Region level P&L. Translate financial opportunities and threats into real actions that can be driven by the operation to positively influence P&L performance. Also engage with finance and capacity planning to ensure expectations in budgets are realistic.

Ability to identify and understand when things are not going well, working through into Problem Statements with tangible and realistic recovery plans put in place

Regularly interact with client and supplier organisations, including the CWU and Prospect Unions to ensure strong people engagement.

All undertakings by the SEOM support an engaged customer centric safe engineering workforce. 

Aligned to the RD cultural strategy and a key influencer in its delivery. 

Own the implementation strategy of new products such as FTTP and G.FAST in the region. Identify potential operational risks to success and work with needed stakeholders to address at earliest possible stage. 

Work closely with FDT to take E2E ownership of patch planning including patch set up to ensure the correct skilled capacity matches work volumes to deliver service in an efficient way delivering MSLs. 

Decision maker on inputs into operational plans, attendance patterns etc.

You'll have the following skills & experience

• A true customer champion, and an ability to be operationally customer solutions focused, demonstrating real customer empathy in everything they do.

• Pragmatic team player, adept at holding others to account through a challenging and supportive leadership style, whilst consistently delivering on their own commitments.

• Dynamic leadership capability and vision to set strategic direction, with a proven track record in delivering high client satisfaction, productivity and people motivation. 

• A strong strategic thinker with the ability to both influence the direction of region together with the operational knowledge and expertise to be hands on and dive into detail where needed to ensure regional customer & stakeholder satisfaction.

• Capability of influencing & challenging peers, fellow senior leads and functional leads to encourage innovation & achieve the best customer outcomes.

• Financial acumen, a strong financial background is required, due to cost management, budget and P&L responsibilities.

• Experience of leading a large scale operational team.

• Technical knowledge of complex telecoms networks and network technologies.

• Extensive understanding of Openreach’s processes and departments and how they align to deliver end to end for our customers.

• Ability to utilise insight in order to drive business decisions and outcomes– applying operational insight and excellent problem solving capability.

• Brings creative thought to the table around risk mitigation and developing plans to leverage opportunities.

• A deep understanding of Service Delivery’s operational and delivery processes.

• Able to cut through barriers (perceived or real) to bring real clarity and focus to delivering for our customers.

• Ability to interpret key analytics in order to drive business decisions and outcomes– apply operational insight and excellent problem solving capability.

Benefits

As well as offering a competitive base salary, you’ll also have a rewarding bonus scheme, access to equity schemes and an attractive pension offer.

We value different perspectives, skills and experiences. Diversity makes sense for us, our customers and our ambitions. We’re creating an inclusive working culture where people from all backgrounds can succeed. That’s why we welcome applications from all parts of the community.