Project Assistant

Your Impact : At Jacobs, we'll inspire and empower you to deliver your best work so you can evolve, grow and succeed - today and into tomorrow. With more than 55,000 people in 40 countries, working at Jacobs offers an exciting range of opportunities to develop your career within a supportive and diverse team who always strive to do the right thing for our people, clients and communities.

People are Jacobs’ greatest asset, and we offer a competitive package to retain and attract the best talent.

In addition to the benefits you’d expect, UK employees also receive free single medical cover and digital GP service, family friendly benefits such as enhanced parental leave pay, free membership of employee assistance and parental programmes, plus reimbursement towards relevant professional development and memberships. We also give back to our communities through our Collectively program which incorporates matched-funding, paid volunteering time and charitable donations.

Work-life balance and flexibility is a key focus area for Jacobs. We’re happy to discuss hybrid, part-time and flexible working hours, patterns and locations to suit you and our business.

About the Opportunity

Jacobs is looking to recruit a Project Assistant to support the management activities and growth in our Strategic Markets business. Based from a UK office, the Project assistant will be responsible for supporting the Group Director and Operations Directors with the management and co-ordination of internal projects and budgets to maximise efficiency and ensure accuracy in forecasting and delivery.

As the business has grown significantly in multiple geographies, a need has been identified to ensure co-ordination across a number of business functions and the wider teams across Strategic Markets team to drive consistency and efficient use of budgets and to maximise the benefits to the business and our customers. You will be responsible for the:

• Engagement: proactively engaging across the Strategic Markets business at all levels to ensure alignment of expectations, whilst providing oversight where needed.
• Future: working with the Operations Management team to look forward, forecast trends and run rates to help improve business forecasting.
• Delivery: ensuring data accuracy and completeness to allow efficient management decision making. Raising questions, and challenging when appropriate, to help drive good behaviours across the business with all internally funded activities.
• Looking After It: owning the investigation of issues on behalf of the Operations Management team to uncover root causes, and using inquisitive behaviours to ensure we are maximising the return on internal investment whilst minimising business inefficiency.
• Beyond Zero: Advocating and supporting safety, health, and wellbeing through our Beyond Zero Culture of Caring and in delivery of health and safety performance & behaviours.

Here’s what you’ll need : As a Project Assistant, you will have experience in project and business systems, and in particular the interfaces with financial and cost control, to allow pragmatic review and oversight of data to support the management team. You will have a proactive approach to ownership and having taken on a task will diligently explore the issue and drive to a conclusion, communicating with the appropriate stakeholders to gather information and then reporting back to the management team where needed for escalation purposes, or to close the task.

The role will rely heavily on proactive communication with the whole of the Strategic Markets business, including interfacing with the teams in Slovakia and Japan, as well as the UK based teams. The role will include gathering of data from various sources and cross checking for completeness to ensure accuracy and correct interpretation by the Operations Management team. Specifically, you will have:

• A passion for accuracy with a proactive approach and willingness to take ownership of tasks and dig into the detail to ensure true understanding.
• The ability to communicate effectively and develop relationships with internal stakeholders across the whole business.
• An understanding of cost control and financial information to allow thorough interrogation of the presented data, although it is not expected that you will be a cost or financial expert, data will come from a variety sources and review for completeness is expected.
• A flexible approach to support the management team with the delivery of the business forecasts and targets.
• Knowledge of specific systems used for project controls and finance reporting is preferred.

This key supporting role is envisaged to support the Strategic Markets Operations Management team, allowing our enhanced focus on growth of the business into international geographies, whilst maintaining a robust and methodical control of internal budgets and forecasts.

Our Culture

Our values stand on a foundation of safety, integrit