Senior Design Manager

  • Kier Group
  • Leeds, Yorkshire
  • Apr 15, 2026
Full time Construction

Job Description

We're looking for a Senior Design Manager to join our Kier Construction team based in Leeds.

Location: Leeds - remote working available, with occasional travel to the office required.

Hours: 37.5 Hours, Monday to Friday, we can consider some flexibility on hours

We are unable to offer certificates of sponsorship to any candidates in this role.

As a Senior Design Manager at Kier Construction, you'll play a key role in delivering high-quality public sector projects across Yorkshire. Working on projects ranging from £10M to over £100M, you'll collaborate with our preconstruction and construction teams to ensure design excellence from tender stage through to completion. Our projects span diverse sectors including education, healthcare, heritage, and justice, offering you the opportunity to make a real impact on communities.

What will you be responsible for?

As a Senior Design Manager, you'll be working within the Design and Build team, supporting them in delivering exceptional design solutions that strengthen our client relationships. Your day to day will include:

  • Managing design teams through tender and preconstruction stages, ensuring all information is delivered on programme and to the highest standards
  • Coordinating design consultants and monitoring their performance, addressing any concerns to maintain quality and compliance
  • Chairing design meetings, producing progress reports, and presenting updates to senior leadership
  • Creating and managing design programmes, responsibility matrices, and documentation to keep projects running smoothly
  • Identifying and mitigating design-related risks whilst providing strategic expertise on innovative construction solutions

What are we looking for?

This role of Senior Design Manager is great for you if:

  • You have a relevant qualification in Construction Management, Engineering, or Architecture, ideally with chartership or additional accreditation
  • You've successfully managed design on tenders and live projects within a main contractor environment, particularly on complex, high-value schemes
  • You're knowledgeable about BIM Level 2, current building regulations, and key design principles across all disciplines
  • You're confident producing presentations and leading meetings with both internal teams and external stakeholders
  • You understand building contracts (NEC, JCT, SBCC) and how they influence design management approaches

We're all about finding potential here at Kier, and transferable skills are always welcome! So, even if you don't tick every box, please apply and we can have a chat.

Rewards and benefits

We're proud to be able to offer our brilliant people a wide variety of benefits that you can tailor to your needs. You can see more information of benefits here.

Diversity and inclusion

Making Kier a diverse and inclusive place to work is a huge priority for us. We're proud of the steps we've taken so far, but we know we must always do more. Our employees are key in shaping Kier's diversity and inclusion initiatives and our people have made a huge impact on how we work, by using their experiences to shape our policies. You can see our D&I action plan here. As a Disability Confident employer, we will ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria for this role will be offered an interview.

We look forward to seeing your application to .

Matched pension scheme up to 7.5%, Life Assurance, Enhanced Family Friendly Policies, Discounts on go-to brands, Free Heath and wellbeing services, Training and development schemes, Electric Vehicle Leasing, Paid volunteering leave.