Job Description
Workforce Planning Expert (18 Month Fixed Term Contract)
Location – Manchester/ Warrington/ Derby with Hybrid working Available
About Us
Rolls‑Royce SMR is here to transform how nuclear energy is delivered—cleaner, faster and at global scale. Our teams are developing one of the world’s most advanced small modular reactors, helping secure affordable, low‑carbon energy for generations to come.
We’re doing something that’s never been done before. We’re revolutionising an industry. That’s a once-in-a-career opportunity for those excited by such a challenge. This is more than just a job; this is a legacy.
Role Purpose
The Workforce Planning Expert is the enterprise subject matter expert responsible for ensuring Rolls-Royce SMR can deliver its strategic and programme objectives through an affordable, resilient and executable workforce plan. The role advises on the workforce construct required to deliver the target operating model, balancing capability, capacity, cost, productivity, delivery pace, and risk across permanent employees, contingent labour, strategic partners and outsourced services.
The role is responsible for the design, development and continuous improvement of an integrated workforce planning approach spanning trusted in-year plans, rolling 2-3 year forecasts and a strategic 3-5 year workforce roadmap. It supports the translation of business strategy, operating model choices, programme delivery assumptions, and organisational design into quantified workforce demand, capability requirements, cost profiles, sourcing choices and clear interventions.
The role provides independent, evidence-led challenge and expert advice to senior leaders, partnering across Finance, Portfolio and Programme, PMO, Organisation Design, HR, Talent Acquisition and functional leadership. It will establish the governance, modelling standards, data discipline and decision forums required to turn workforce information into enterprise action, enabling timely choices on build, buy, borrow, partner or outsource and ensuring material workforce risks, dependencies and constraints are understood and actively managed. Success is achieved through influential partnering, robust governance, evidence-based challenge and the translation of workforce insight into tangible business outcomes, capability readiness and programme delivery confidence.
What we’ll need you to deliver
A single, trusted and governed in-year workforce plan aligned to approved budgets, programme and commercial milestones, organisational design and recruitment capacity.
A rolling 2-3 year workforce forecast and 3-5 year strategic workforce roadmap that identify when, where and at what cost critical capacity and capability are required.
An integrated view of workforce demand and supply across permanent employees, contingent labour, partners and outsourced services, with clear recommendations on the optimum resource mix.
Workforce planning is embedded as a core business discipline through effective stakeholder engagement, governance, and decision-making forums, ensuring leaders are equipped to make timely, evidence-based workforce choices and are accountable for delivery of agreed actions.
Strategic workforce recommendations are translated into measurable business outcomes, including improved delivery confidence, reduced workforce risk, enhanced capability readiness, increased resource agility, and optimised workforce investment decisions.
Robust capacity, capability, cost, sourcing and scenario models that enable senior leaders to compare options and make explicit trade-offs between affordability, speed, risk, flexibility and delivery confidence.
A prioritised capability gap and workforce risk register, including dependencies, constraints, scarcity, succession exposure and mitigation actions with named ownership.
A sustainable enterprise workforce planning governance and approvals framework, supported by common definitions, planning assumptions, controls, standards and an…