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Partnering with the armed forces

Proudly military friendly

AtkinsRéalis is a leading global consultancy with over 80 years of design, engineering and project management expertise. We’re engineering a better future on complex, time-critical projects across security, aerospace and defence, transportation, cities and development, energy, environment, industrial and manufacturing, and water markets. 

We are proud to employ more than 150 veterans and 50 reservists, as well as cadet force adult volunteers (CFAVs) and military spouses/partners. These talented individuals contribute considerable transferable experience and expertise – from stakeholder, organizational, leadership and management skills to high levels of professionalism, problem-solving, awareness of health and safety, security awareness and best practices, and teamwork.

Over and above being the right thing to do for the nation, the invaluable diversity of talent the Armed Forces community brings to our team is why we signed the Armed Forces Covenant and achieved the Gold Award in the Ministry of Defence’s Employer Recognition Scheme in 2015, which was revalidated in 2020. To enable AtkinsRéalis to deliver on its pledges and commitments, we created the Partnering with Armed Forces (PwAF) programme led by our Armed Forces Champion and a Programme Manager. In effect, this created AtkinsRéalis’ first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) employee network, of which there are now nine.

AtkinsRéalis - Partnering with the Armed Forces

team sitting around lunch table

AtkinsRéalis - Partnering with the Armed Forces

Working for our armed forces community

PwAF provides leadership and management for our extensive Armed Forces community, supporting the needs of the business as well as those of its members. PwAF ensures this vibrant community remains connected and active internally and externally. We also help the community understand their entitlement to benefits and how to access veteran-specific health and well-being support from the NHS and military charities. PwAF works closely with the MOD’s Defence Relationship Management and Reserve Forces and Cadets Association (RFCA) in the Wessex Region. 

We also conduct extensive outreach with military resettlement organizations, including the MOD's Career Transition Partnership, BuildForce, Recruit for Spouses, the Forces Employment Charity (and their TechVets programme), Forces Families Jobs, the REME Association's Jobs Agency (RAJA), and the White Ensign Association. 

We run military insight days and attend career events. We run a mentor network to enable early conversations to shape service leavers’ understanding of their fit with our organization. This includes reviewing CVs and preparing for interviews. We also aim to recruit more spouses and partners of Armed Forces personnel into permanent roles. 

We also work with organizations helping veterans and service leavers to transition into their second careers.

team sitting around lunch table

Our fundraising

We fundraise for military charities such as the Soldiers, Sailors, and Air Forces Association (SSAFA). And by being a founding member of the Employer Recognition Scheme’s Gold Award Association, we have enabled companies to share knowledge and ideas to further the cause. We lead the Wessex Region GAA group on behalf of the GAA and Wessex RFCA.

Awarding our commitment

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AtkinsRéalis' signature of the Armed Forces Covenant and gaining the Gold Award in the Ministry of Defence’s Employer Recognition Scheme in 2015 demonstrate our commitment to supporting the UK’s Armed Forces. Our Gold Award was successfully revalidated in 2020.

AtkinsRéalis won the Heropreneurs' Large Employer of the Year in 2019 as a recognition that we are outstanding at helping service personnel transition from military to civilian employment as well as helping the armed forces community to realize their full potential in the civilian workforce.

In 2023 AtkinsRéalis was invited to participate in the inaugural 100 GREAT British Employers of Veterans. This recognizes our outstanding support to ex-Armed Forces personnel, including attraction and retention, career training and development, engagement and empowerment.

The PwAF team encourages nominations for the annual Ex-Forces in Business Awards and was particularly proud that Paul Hutchinson won Reservist of the Year in 2022.

Our commitment is to be the best at driving inclusion and diversity within our organization, enabling our female employees to be the best they can be.

Meet our people

We offer a friendly pathway into a rewarding second career where you can make a tangible, sustainable impact on the world. We are proud to provide a welcoming environment where people understand your background, experiences, three-letter acronyms and unique culture. 

Our dedicated PwAF team is here to help you along this journey. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of culture, with colleagues willing to pitch in to help you grow and succeed. We're increasing the diversity of our people, creating a more welcoming place to work, where everyone feels valued and free to share ideas, promoting an inclusive culture, and providing everyone with an equal voice because we know it's the right thing to do. 

Hear from talented ex-armed forces team members.

team sitting around lunch table

New starters

PwAF works with our HR and recruitment teams and hiring managers to ensure we reach out to service leavers through Military Insight days, virtual careers fairs, one-to-one engagement advice, mentoring, matching to job roles, and arranging work placements to allow Service Leavers to 'try before they buy’. 

BuildForce and Recruit for Spouses can match candidates to our jobs. Our roles are also advertised on portals such as CTP. The PwAF mentor network, hiring managers and recruitment teams match candidates to appropriate positions across our business divisions. We evaluate candidates' non-traditional experiences with open minds, treating your job application with fairness and understanding.

team sitting around lunch table

Ongoing training and support

You're welcome to use your Enhanced Learning Credits for your career progression. With us, you'll also enjoy mentoring, leadership training, and support with personal, unbiased career planning. 

Thanks to our award-winning well-being strategy, we also have excellent resources and facilities to support you. These include healthy workplaces, 24/7 employee assistance support, mental health first aiders and resilience training.

team sitting around lunch table

Rewards and benefits

We take a holistic approach to making you feel rewarded and appreciated for your work and talent. Total Reward is a package you can tailor to your changing lifestyle, career and personal needs. It includes benefits including buying and selling annual leave, access to the best doctors, partner discounts and top financial advice and products.

Find out more about rewards and benefits
team sitting around lunch table

Flexibility to thrive

We genuinely care for our veterans and reservists and are committed to an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We encourage flexible working, supporting employees with important out-of-work commitments. Talk to us about what suits you: part-time working, job sharing, mobile working, phased retirement, hybrid and home working, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, sabbaticals or career breaks and term-time working.

What skills can I bring?

Many service leavers and veterans feel they lack experience in our industry. However, they already have transferable skills and an excellent foundation for our key roles thanks to considerable skills, knowledge, and qualifications, such as the Association of Project Management Professionals, PRINCE 2, Bachelors'/Masters' degrees and charterships in engineering or management. These provide an excellent foundation for our key roles – here are just some of them:

What skills can I bring?

With broad MOD experience, veterans are highly suited to management consultancy. Our teams engineer a better future – managing projects from start to finish, developing and implementing innovative technological solutions to complex problems, and supporting nationwide digital transformation.

P3M roles are a great way to transition military experience and develop credentials. We have a world-leading, integrated project and programme management consultancy, with Project Delivery Practices where veterans can match their skills to our sectors.

With TechVets, we upskill and recruit veterans and spouses with digital skills. Veterans can apply their technical knowledge to identify and establish good security governance, conduct cybersecurity risk assessments and determine cost-effective security controls and solutions for clients in business-as-usual, technical refresh and new project environments.

Many veterans bring detailed engineering knowledge, skills and experience from maritime, land, air, cyber and space. It’s a great starting point for becoming a safety and asset management engineer in our resilience teams. Veterans are supported to lead projects in systems thinking – analysing, assessing and developing mitigations for safety, environmental and cyber threats.

Veterans can join high-end engineering teams working on ground-breaking projects. They'll help find complex solutions for technically challenging engineering problems – from initial design concepts for new products to qualification testing, certification and in-service support.

Many veterans have experience in this area from working with drones. Our services cover the full lifecycle of location-based information, from data acquisition, processing and spatial analysis to information and data management. Our success lies in our integration across the organisation and our hunger to keep pushing geospatial solutions forward.

Together we solve the world's biggest, most complex design challenges from environment to sustainability and Net Zero. Veterans can choose from large or niche technical projects from concept to completion across defence and security, urban and commercial development, residential, recreation and cultural, education, data centres, transportation (including connected and autonomous electric vehicles, railways, airports and aviation), nuclear and clean energy, water infrastructure and ports and harbours.

Veterans are often highly suited to the role of client manager within our business. They understand our markets and client needs and help us build our business across all sectors.

For Service leavers who can extract, combine, process, analyse and interpret data from different sources. We value their communication skills in building key stakeholder relationships and accurately understanding their requirements in a fast-paced environment.

Our teams

When you join us, everything you do will engineer a better future – no matter the project's scale, complexity, or location. Discover our teams below:

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As part of our ADS&T team, you'll work with teams across mission-critical sectors, making a direct difference to individuals and countries – from keeping thousands of air passengers safe to helping governments achieve their security goals.

Change the way the world connects. Our teams are making transportation more intelligent, safer and more reliable than ever. You’ll work on challenges that bring traditional engineering and new technologies together, creating new ideas and finding intelligent solutions and ways to improve existing infrastructure.

We touch on every aspect of social and economic infrastructure. We're a cross-disciplinary team of over 500 environmentalists, sustainability experts, ecologists, scientists, planners, economists, project managers and engineers. Whether it's an airport, a transport interchange, a university campus or the world's first tidal lagoon, we use digital technologies to make spaces and places work perfectly for people and the planet.

A career in Project & Programme Services, our world-leading, integrated project and programme management consultancy means opportunities to work on significant global projects. Our work covers everything from transportation to defence, energy to infrastructure, from the world's tallest hotel in Dubai to giant clean energy plants and projects at London's Heathrow Airport.

Be part of a team that makes it possible for generations to experience the benefits of nuclear. You’ll work with the latest technologies, creating cleaner, more sustainable energy solutions. You’ll join our talented teams on hydro, renewables, energy storage, transmission and distribution projects – across an asset’s entire lifecycle. As digital technologies become increasingly integrated into our work, we’re routinely building and using intelligent networks and cyber security systems to make plants more secure and run more efficiently.

Our markets

We collaborate in multidisciplinary teams, connecting people, digital technology and data across ten core markets: cities and development; consulting and advisory; energy; environment and geoscience; industrial and manufacturing; minerals and metallurgy; project, programme and cost management; security, aerospace and defence; transportation; and water.

Supporting our reservists and cadet force adult volunteers

AtkinsRéalis welcomes and encourages employees to become reservists which provides many benefits to the individual, the Armed Forces and our business. The training and skills gained in the Reserves can be used to improve performance in the workplace and can enhance skills in areas such as leadership, teamwork, communication and decision making often in challenging situations and environments. Many of the attributes expected from individuals while they are in the Reserves can be mapped across to AtkinsRéalis roles and associated core competence frameworks. 

The experience you gain as a reservist is highly relevant to your career and it can help you understand your career aspirations, support your development and your successful progression. 

We support reservists by providing an additional 10 days’ paid leave over and above normal leave. We have clear procedures for line managers and reservists to follow to enable a fruitful relationship that maximizes benefits to all; including enabling the mobilisation of reservists, which routinely takes place in the UK (e.g. Covid-19 Task Force) and overseas. We also run reservist recruitment fairs in our offices. 

Furthermore, we promote the Cadet Force Adult Volunteer Service as the benefits of volunteering are varied, from learning new skills, meeting people, taking on challenges and gaining valuable leadership experience. AtkinsRéalis offers CFAVs the same additional leave benefit as reservists.

team sitting around lunch table

Join our events

PwAF runs and is involved in, activities across the UK, from virtual careers fairs to in-person Military Insight days and mentoring, including our attendance at CTP Careers Fairs. 

Our people advocate for support through forum presentations and webinars. Internally, we host activities, training, and round table events, such as our annual conference, where reservists can engage with and give feedback to our senior leadership.

Connect with us

You can get in touch with us at armedforces@atkinsrealis.com. Search jobs and apply, or for regular updates join our talent community.