Process Engineering Graduate

The Environment Agency are fully committed to having an inclusive workforce to reflect the communities we serve. We don’t just talk about diversity; we seek it, embrace it, and live it, for the benefit of our staff, our communities, and our environment.

These graduate posts are an expansion from our successful industrial placement programme to introduce more chemical engineers into our Regulated Industry teams.

During the first year you’ll work within our permitting team to assess permit applications for industrial activities and write environmental permits that require industrial sites to operate at high standards and limit their impact to the environment. Starting with some simple applications to gain an understanding of our assessment process, you’ll then move on to more complex applications that will rely on your process engineering knowledge, such as air dispersion modelling.

For the second year you’ll work alongside our Regulatory Officers in one of our Local Operations teams. You’ll visit industrial sites to check that the conditions of the environmental permits are being met, provide advice to permit holders looking to change their operations and support investigations where legal obligations are not being met.

You’ll then be deployed into other departments to develop a breadth and depth of understanding of the roles where chemical engineers can help the Environment Agency deliver our objectives.

While you’ll arrive equipped with a knowledge of the industrial processes we regulate, we’ll provide you with further training to enable you to carry out our regulatory duties. You’ll also be assigned a chartered IChemE mentor who will ensure your experience is relevant to your professional development and support your chartership journey.

You’ll have an inclusive incident management objective in your development plan, so we’ll support you to find an incident role to suit your needs and circumstances. Appropriate training will be given.

The team  

We promote a positive, inclusive, and supportive culture where everyone feels valued.

Throughout the scheme you’ll work with various colleagues based across the country and you will be encouraged to build a network of contacts ranging from Regulatory Officers who carry out compliance inspections to environmental specialists and Head Office staff that liaise with government.

Please see Additional Information Pack for more information.

Experience/skills required 

When you join us in September you must have achieved MEng on an IChemE accredited course in the last 2 years. You will benefit from any environmental modules that were included in your course, but it is not essential for you to have done these.

The ability to drive is desirable but not essential.

In your capability-based answers please demonstrate your:
- ability to work effectively with people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures and actively encourage others to consider diversity issues in their work.
- ability to set and deliver high work standards, demonstrating a drive to meet targets.
- ability to prioritise and organise tasks and resources to ensure timely achievement of results.
- ability to interpret, manage and share data and information appropriately for a variety of purposes.

You will receive a range of development opportunities and appropriate training will be provided.

Please see Additional Information Pack for more information.