Production Strategy Lead

Summary: The Production Strategy Lead is a high-impact role responsible for the end-to-end architectural design and execution of our production planning framework. As the founding leader of this department, you will bridge the gap between long-term capital investment and daily operational delivery. You hold ultimate strategic ownership of the annual, monthly, and weekly production cycles, ensuring that our asset portfolio operates at peak efficiency while maintaining uncompromising safety and regulatory standards. This is a build-and-scale opportunity. You will be expected to establish the governance structures, hire and develop a high-performing team, and integrate disparate data streams into a cohesive, centralised production strategy that balances complex supply-demand variables against maintenance requirements and outages. Key Responsibilities Departmental Architecture & Strategic Optimisation Greenfield Implementation: Design and implement the department's standard operating procedures (SOPs), selecting the necessary toolsets and establishing KPIs for the production planning function. Integrated Planning:Develop a dynamic production model that synchronises demand forecasting with resource availability to maximise cost-efficiency and asset longevity. Outage Governance: Serve as the final authority for the Outage Management System (OMS), ensuring that all planned interruptions are strictly vetted for risk, necessity, and strategic alignment. Capital Alignment: Act as the primary interface between the Investment Delivery Process (IDP) and Operations to prevent conflicting capital schemes from compromising service resiliencePerformance, Compliance & Risk Mitigation Regulatory Stewardship: Ensure 100% adherence to abstraction licences through automated monitoring and early-warning systems. Resilience Engineering: Create data-driven contingency plans and stress-test network and production assets. Asset Integrity: Oversee centralised management for critical infrastructure, including borehole refurbishments and reservoir inspections.Leadership & Influence Team Development: Recruit, coach, and lead a team of specialised Production Planners, fostering a culture of technical excellence and accountability. Operational Direction: Provide centralised strategic direction to Production Managers across both Process and Maintenance functions, ensuring siloed activities align with the overarching company strategy. Stakeholder Management: Influence the wider business by presenting complex risk-reward scenarios and strategic options to the executive leadership team.Note on Flexibility: In an evolving utility landscape, the incumbent must remain agile. You will be expected to adapt the production strategy in response to emerging regulatory requirements, climate variability, and technological advancements. What You'll Bring Qualifications & Experience Academic Excellence: Degree-level qualification (or equivalent) in Engineering, Supply Chain Management, Data Science, or a technical discipline. Sector Expertise: Extensive experience in high-stakes production planning, ideally within the Utilities or Water sector. Leadership: A proven track record of organisational design-building, mentoring, and scaling technical teams.Skills & Experience Advanced Analytics: Mastery of predictive modelling and data synthesis to translate raw SCADA/Prism telemetry into actionable long-term strategy. Strategic Diplomacy: Exceptional influencing skills with the ability to navigate boardroom-level discussions and gain buy-in from cross-functional stakeholders. Systems Thinking: Deep expertise in resource optimisation, balancing short-term tactical volatility with multi-year asset health goals. Sector Expertise: Extensive experience in high-stakes production planning, ideally within the Utilities or Water sector. Narrative Data Presentation:A sophisticated ability to distil complex risk profiles and performance metrics into clear, executive-level narrativesWe want to be the water company people want to be supplied by and want to work for. We know the communities we serve are diverse. We recognise creativity comes from diversity not similarity. That's why we are enthusiastic about creating inclusion across age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion and identity. You will experience our dedication to equal opportunities and fair treatment for all: through your recruitment, employment and career progression with South East Water. Benefits package: Excellent Stakeholder pension scheme, up to 10% employer contribution. 5 weeks holiday plus bank holidays per annum, increasing to 6 weeks with length of service. Flexible annual leave policy to buy or sell holiday leave. Paid volunteering days. Cycle to work scheme. Health cash plan. Life assurance. Wellbeing related benefits.What can you expect from your recruitment? To apply for this position, please submit your CV on our career's website. It is necessary for you to have the legal right to work in the UK when you begin employment with South East Water. Additionally, as part of the employment offer, you will need to pass background, identity, and employment referencing checks.If this sounds like the opportunity you've been looking for, apply now! South East Water kindly asks that recruitment agencies refrain from submitting CVs to our employees or associates without explicit invitation from our HR Resourcing team. CVs sent on a speculative basis will not be acknowledged and will not assume any responsibility for fees or commissions in the event that we hire a candidate who applied directly or subsequently introduced by an instructed agency. Compensation package: Up to £60,000 + £6,492.29 car allowance