Associate Director / Director, GIS

Associate Director / Director, GIS Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Edinburgh, or Glasgow

About the role

LUC’s GIS & Visualisation team sits at the heart of our digital excellence and innovation. Built on strong foundations in GIS and 3D visualisation, the team has grown through sustained investment into a 40‑strong, highly skilled group of specialists delivering some of LUC’s most exciting and influential projects. We work closely with multi‑disciplinary colleagues across the business and directly with clients, earning a strong reputation for quality, insight and professionalism.

Our portfolio continues to expand, with an increasing focus on interactive communication, data insights and visual storytelling. As a central hub of technology expertise, we support colleagues and clients to work in new ways, increase their impact and innovate.

To build on this momentum and to deliver our ambitious company strategy, we are strengthening our leadership team. This role will provide both project and people leadership across our GIS & Visualisation team, extending our capabilities and focusing effort where digital approaches can create the greatest value.

You will join a friendly, experienced and highly supportive team committed to high‑quality professional work and to delivering effective, innovative solutions. With a primary focus on GIS, the role suits someone who combines strong people skills with curiosity, flexibility, problem‑solving ability and a genuine enthusiasm for championing geospatial thinking.

This role will provide additional leadership for a team delivering an ambitious geospatial team plan, combined with business as usual – project ownership, people management and internal / external engagement. Maintaining up to date expertise for self and team and evolving use of technologies across our projects.

The candidate will be a strategic thinker with broad‑ranging technical, commercial and leadership experience. You will have a strong interest in staying at the forefront of GIS methods and technologies; and have the drive to use that knowledge to help us deliver our team‑wide strategy. We are looking for a master problem solver who will champion the intelligent use of GIS and Visualisation across all our projects to increase our impact.

The role will involve

• Contributing to team‑wide strategy development and delivery, annual team budget development, and a role in supporting digital excellence across LUC.
• Working alongside the leadership team to inspire, motivate and lead our existing team of enthusiastic specialists.
• Providing mentoring and training to colleagues as well as a flexible approach to problem solving.
• Providing leadership in data management and developing our use of PostgreSQL and FME.
• Helping to ensure the quality of our outputs is of the highest standard.
• Providing methodological input into a wide range of consultancy projects, supporting and developing the skills of our consultant team.
• Bidding for and leading projects with accountability for resourcing, coordinating delivery and financial performance.
• Continually seeking to raise the bar in terms of digital excellence both internally and for our client projects.
• Build and maintain client and industry relationships.
• Representing LUC externally at industry and best practice events.

The role includes the opportunity to share and participate actively in the management and ownership of the business through the Employee Ownership Trust, which places full ownership of the company with the employees.

This position can be based in any of LUC's offices across the UK (Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Edinburgh, or Glasgow). We work in a hybrid model with people being in the office a minimum of two days per week. There will also be travel required to visit sites, client offices and other office locations.

A full‑time role is based on 37.5 hours per week (Monday to Friday). However, LUC has a strong track record in flexible working, and we have been recognised for our flexible working culture, so we are happy to discuss a range of flexible working options for this role including part‑time hours (minimum 30 hours per week) if desired.

Experience and qualifications

We are looking for someone with a proactive, enthusiastic, organised and effective approach to their work, and with an appetite for diverse projects. The position requires good all‑round skills in resource management, training and development, verbal and written communication, and a combination of business skills and technical competence. It is important that you can work collaboratively, manage and develop more junior colleagues, articulate ideas and communicate effectively.

This role requires visibility; someone who is accessible to colleagues and willing to travel to other offices occasionally to engage with a team spread across the UK.

Alongside having the ability to work on a number of projects simultaneously, the candidate will be a quick learner, able to take ideas and convert them into prototypes.

The right candidate will have an infectious love of geospatial technology and a desire to enable others to maximise the benefits of spatial thinking across our projects to deliver better futures for nature, people and places. Your passion for applying your skills to address the climate and biodiversity crises will be a key motivator.

• GIS or related degree, or a blend of knowledge and qualifications reflecting a similar level of expertise.
• Significant experience in a leadership role in consultancy or other non‑academic context applying GIS to landscape, planning, ecology or wider environmental issues.
• Demonstrable work winning, project management and business development skills.
• Ability to act as a trusted advisor to clients and colleagues on the use of GIS and spatial data in environmental planning.
• Extensive experience of ESRI software products, particularly ArcGIS Pro and AGOL with a range of extensions.
• Good awareness or working knowledge of open source GIS software.
• Working knowledge of FME (Form and Flow).
• PostgreSQL or other spatial database management experience.
• Good knowledge of using UK environmental and Ordnance Survey datasets – both licensed and open data.
• Experience of line management, mentoring and succession planning.
• Excellent writing skills including the ability to communicate complex issues clearly.
• Ability and desire to stay up to date with emerging geospatial and technology trends.
• A digital ‘Swiss army knife’ able to utilise a wide range of geospatial, database or 3D software packages.
• Knowledge of using GIS in a strategic planning context (e.g Local Plan evidence development, strategic ecology, landscape planning, Sustainability Appraisal).
• Skills across both 2D and 3D data and visualisation.
• Well networked in the geospatial community.
• Experience contributing to thought leadership, guidance or internal standards.
• Machine learning expertise and experience of manipulating remote sensing data.
• Python scripting, including ArcPy.
• R programming language.
• Growing knowledge of AI trends both in geospatial and more generally.

Candidates must be eligible to live and work in the UK.

LUC is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and we actively encourage applications from under‑represented groups. We value the differences, needs and contributions a diverse workforce represents, and we strive to embed equality, diversity and inclusion in all our people related activities.

Location Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Edinburgh, or Glasgow

Salary £58,000 - £79,000 FTE, depending on experience (plus London allowance of £4,000 if applicable)

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