Principal Consultant

Principal Consultant – Manufacturing & Industrials | Partner Track

From £100,000 + significant performance related bonus

This is a role with greater influence, more autonomy and a clear line of sight to senior leadership.

At Curzon, Principals are not boxed into “sales” or “delivery”. You will lead client work. You will carry commercial responsibility. You will stay hands-on with delivery. You will advise senior stakeholders. You will help shape our Manufacturing & Industrials practice.

Maybe you are doing well right now. But your environment is too structured. Your remit is too narrow. Your progress is too slow. If so, this is a real alternative. Here, you can build something. You can own the upside.

This role is not an IT infrastructure or digital transformation one.

Other benefits include:

• 30 days paid holiday a year
• BUPA private medical insurance for you and your partner or spouse. This is a "Medical History Disregarded" policy. That's a big advantage.
• Income Protection cover at 50% of your salary after 28 consecutive weeks of sickness
• Death-in-service cover which pays out up to four times salary
• Bi-annual trips paid for by the Company of which one includes partners and children
• You can join Partner and Principal dinners. You pick the restaurant. There are also regular team socials for Consulting. These are funded, or partly funded. They're good for networking and learning.
• An Employee Ownership Trust - As the firm succeeds, our people share in that success as beneficiaries over time. When you build the practice here, you are building something you have a stake in.

What you’ll do:

• You will lead high-value delivery. You will win new work. You will build the practice. This is a Partner-track role. You get real exposure to firm leadership, its decisions and its responsibilities.
• Lead the work - Own our manufacturing and industrial engagements end-to-end. Start with the problem. Finish with a real, measurable result.
• Grow the business - Shape our focus in priority subsectors. Generate leads, with the Partner and through your own network. Lead our approach and proposals.
• Build the practice - Develop consultants. Strengthen key accounts. Help make Curzon the partner of choice for UK manufacturing clients.

You could lead a sector or a service line. And in time, you could help lead the whole firm as a Partner.

In your first 6–12 months you will:

• Lead consulting engagements that deliver tangible, measurable results for UK manufacturing and industrial clients, whether anchored in a particular sector or with a value‑chain bias.
• Turn your existing relationships into pipeline and convert the pipeline into value‑priced work.
• Shape how Curzon partners with industrial clients and develop priority accounts.
• Drive practice growth with proposition development, thought leadership and developing the consulting team.

What you’ll need:

• A track record at a relatively senior level within a recognised UK consulting firm, delivering strategic management consulting.
• Around 10 years’ consulting experience in manufacturing or industrial sectors, ideally with prior industry experience behind it.
• A genuine understanding of a manufacturing or assembly environment such as the design, make and sell of tangible products in a B2B context.
• UK or European grounding in industrial sectors. We are not prescriptive: experience in areas such as Automotive, Aerospace & Defence, Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Medtech, Energy or Industrial Products all offers relevant background. We work across these areas over time rather than all at once, so breadth of industrial understanding matters more than a particular sector label.
• Depth across the manufacturing value chain

Real depth somewhere across the value chain, ideally with strength in more than one of:

• Operations: This covers production, assembly, and maintenance. It covers operational performance and Lean. It also covers AI, automation, and Industry 4.0. This agenda is reshaping the factory.
• Innovation, Engineering & Design: This covers engineering, R&D, and product design. It also covers the design and delivery of capital programmes.
• Commercial: This covers B2B commercial management, across sales and service. It also covers the levers that protect and grow margin.
• Supply chain: supply chain management, procurement and distribution and logistics
• ESG: Sustainability and energy transition and resilience.

Commercial and relationship capability

• You have clear commercial skill. This includes business development and lead generation. It includes proposal development. It includes project commercial management, pricing and margin delivery.
• You can point to senior clients who see you as a trusted advisor.
• You have a live network of UK industry contacts. This includes potential buyers of consulting services. It also includes referrers in the sectors you work in.