Senior Ecologist – BNG Specialist

This role is home-based (although you’re welcome in the office as much as you like) and would be ideally suited to a senior ecologist that wants to help drive the deliver BNG services to clients, including surveys, assessments and advice. For probity: we don’t sell or broker the sales of units at Arbtech.

Our BNG services are overseen by Principal Ecologist & BNG Lead, Craig Williams, but to
keep up with our growth we have recognised the need to create a dedicated post for a specialist, senior ecologist to help us ramp up the delivery of our BNG product and assist Craig in the training and development of junior consultants.

We envisage you bringing energy, enthusiasm and attention to detail. You will have a
well-developed “coaching” mindset and enjoy the challenge of bringing out the best in talented young people. You are unafraid to confront the status quo and enjoy the challenge and responsibility for the mentorship of the next generation of ecologists.

Naturally, you’ll be familiar with best practice standards and legislative drivers that apply
to UK habitats and species. However, you will be primarily responsible for the delivery of BNG services for wide array of our clients’ projects and assisting with the QC of the BNG work of junior colleagues. Finally, if you want, we can ensure that you won’t be stuck in an office
every day. Aside from delivering your own project work, you’ll be assisting Craig in the up-skilling
of our team in the field and delivering bespoke, in-house training packages for all things UK Habs and BNG, particularly once the secondary legislation to support delivering BNG is published.

Essential technical skills:

This role will suit you well if you can demonstrate five or more years’ experience across a
broad range of assessments for habitats and protected species, and especially if you have the ability to author higher-level reports such as EPS licencing, HRA and ES chapters.

However, it is essential for this role that you have a very strong grasp of the evolving developments in biodiversity net gain and are confident using UK Habs. You will need to demonstrate that you can produce BNG assessments as well as on/off-site management plans and associated supporting documents to a very high standard.

Essential (non-technical) skills:

• Coaching mindset
• Extremely well organised
• Incredible attention to detail
• Ability to prioritise competing demands on your time
• Sociable
• Excellent communicator verbally and in writing

Ideally, you will also have achieved:

• Professional membership of CIEEM/RSB and are working toward chartership
• CIEEM’s “Accomplished” criteria for Surveying (among others)
• FISC level 4

The ideal criteria are not all dealbreakers, but certainly give you a flavour of the kind of candidate we’re looking for.

Perks? Just a few.

At Arbtech, the perks are REAL.

We don’t mean a branded thermos flask and a few treats in a mini hamper on your first day. We don’t mean a ticket to attend some event the boss fancies going to, or a few drinks occasionally. We don’t mean an annual conference ticket. And we definitely don’t mean playing mini golf.

What we mean, is this:

1. A culture document that clearly sets out expectations for everyone in the business, so you
   knowthat you’re always aligned with the direction we’re headed.
2. A unique review process that focuses on your contributions to culture and team success.
3. An annual survey of all employees for things like job satisfaction, singing the praises of
   other colleagues, highlighting friction points and suggesting solutions – with responses replied to individually and publicly by the CEO.
4. Structured, objective remuneration and seniority progression that are completely
   disconnected, so you can pursue either, or both—meaning we always have a track to suit you.
5. Market leading salaries.
6. Very generous overtime rates for diurnal and seasonal/nocturnal work.
7. A relatively flat management structure where thoughtful disagreement is strongly encouraged and seniority is allocated in a matrix style, which we call “Domains”.
8. A dedicated head of employee development, onboarding co-ordinator, four-person mental
   health first-aid team, and access to senior management 24/7 for anything you want help with.
9. A real sense of team.
10. Complete autonomy over your time and working days/hours. This is the ultimate in flexible working.
11. No time sheets. Ever.
12. Tons of opportunity to get involved in other aspects of the business (and even other
    business, under common ownership), at your discretion.
13. The most comprehensive medical insurance that we can find, including full cancer care and outpatient cover.
14. Service awards that top up your company pension contribution by 5% and 10% on your five-
    and ten-year anniversary with Arbtech.
15. Christmas bonus of £100 for every year worked at Arbtech. Quite a few of our guys have been here for over a decade. A grand+ in your final pay check of the year doesn’t sound too bad,
    right?
16. FORTY days paid holiday.
17. £500 cash bonus when you take maternity/paternity leave.
18. A peer-to-peer cash and gifts bonus scheme administered by employees not management. You can literally gift anyone in the business any item from their “wish list” (which is a handful
    items that range from a tenner to up to several hundred pounds) at any time for any reason. The only stipulation is you must do it in a public channel on our internal system, so we can all
    celebrate the good things someone did for you to want to reward them.
19. 4 days paid leave for R&D projects.
20. Company-owned landholdings for you to train, teach and experiment on.
21. Generous company car scheme/contributions. We can pay mileage at 45p or give you a car contribution (and pay you the government’s fuel mileage rate), or in some circumstances we will buy you the car of your choice (you need to be here a while for that) – the choice is yours.
22. Unlimited CPD fund so you can go to every course, event, conference, and qualification
    there is. Read that again.
23. Paid-as-You-Learn book club: get paid overtime to read important books on life, health,
    fitness, business and management.
24. Nando’s Friday if you work at HQ and an unlimited Pret-a-Manager coffee card if you don’t.
25. Audible, Spotify Premium or Blinkist account so you can listen to audiobooks and catch up
    with podcasts while you drive/work.
26. An early finish (3:00pm) once a week for HQ staff on a day of your choosing.
27. Gym membership. We will also let you use this contribution towards fight sports, yoga, or
    pretty much anything that gets you up and moving.
28. Fitbit or Garmin device to help you stay active and sleep enough!
29. iPad.
30. Absolutely incredible, all expenses paid socials. You’ve probably seen or heard about them
    on social media. From the minute you leave your front door to the minute you get home; you don’t pay for a thing. We’ve taken the whole company to Prague (3 days), Madrid (4 days) and skiing
    in Austria (a week). We’ve also done days and weekends in various cities, stayed in fancy hotels, chilled out at spa lodges in Norfolk, raved for days and nights at various gigs and music
    festivals, and had people taking part in fight sports, surfing, water parks, racing Porsches around Silverstone, and much, much more besides.
31. HUGE Christmas party. This is not to be missed.
32. Finally, we have a mini-social budget so people across the UK can meet up in small groups
    and do things—anything—so long as it doesn’t involve work.