Urban Designer

Urban Designer

Our Group Technical function is responsible for driving the design and technical agenda for the group. Providing guidance to the business around site design and layout, Taylor Wimpey’s suite of house types and best practice on placemaking across all our developments. The Urban Designer will work with the regional business units to improve the quality of Taylor Wimpey’s urban design.  This in turn will deliver; improved performance in delivering value from land, implementable planning consents and sustainable communities for our customers through improved development design. 

This is an exciting and challenging time to be working on the design of the places where people live.  The government’s design agenda is raising the bar on place making and we at Taylor Wimpey are embracing the challenge.  Our Group Design function is responsible for ensuring we meet this challenge, designing places that meet the needs of our customers and the communities they will create, places that meet our aspirations on sustainability and nature.  At the same time our developments have to deliver implementable planning consents that are viable and drive the commercial performance of the group.

To help us deliver these challenging objectives we are looking for an experienced urban designer who will relish the opportunity to support our regional business units in the northern half of the country, building approximately 7000 homes a year.  This is a fantastic opportunity to be part of the team leading the design strategy for one of the three largest housebuilders, with scope to grow and develop both the role and personally.

This role will report to the Group design Director.  As it would focus on the Northern division in our business, the right candidate would ideally be based in North East, Leeds, Manchester or Warrington. You will have the opportunity to work flexibly with remote and home working forming part of your regular week. There will be regular travel to our offices from the North Midlands to Scotland.

What you will do:

• Carry out internal regional design reviews and workshops to improve the design ability of our internal teams
• Support and advise on individual project design delivery for high risk or high-profile projects
• Report on practice and quality of TW development design
• Liaise with external designers to ensure alignment with Taylor Wimpey practice and policy and ensure competency.
• Help to deliver the internal Design Academy to improve knowledge and share best practice
• Working with other head office functions, particularly the Planning Director, Product Development Director, Technical Director, Sustainability Director with regard to cross disciplinary issues.

What you will have:

• Appropriate first degree
• Second degree in Urban Design or other appropriate qualification or membership of appropriate professional body.
• An understanding of place making and its planning and development context
• Experience working in within our industry is preferable but not essential
• An appetite to grow your career and a passion to make a difference
• Ability to communicate graphically with free hand drawing as well as use of appropriate design software.
• Good presentation skills and ability to lead workshops and discussion groups.

Individuals seeking employments at Taylor Wimpey should know that we foster a culture of inclusion and value diversity positively which creates a better workplace and delivers stronger outcomes. We commit to treating all our job applicants and employees fairly and with respect, irrespective of background, disability or any other protected characteristic. If you require any assistance with regards to reasonable adjustments during the application process, please do not hesitate to contact us.

To be successful in this role you must be able to prove eligibility to work in the UK

What we will offer you:

Taylor Wimpey is a FTSE 100 business and one of the largest residential developers in the UK, building new homes and communities across England, Scotland and Wales. We are passionate about building new homes and communities with a focus on sustainability.

Our people are important to us and we want to make sure that we reward and recognise all the great work that they do. Our employees enjoy many standard benefits including access to the Taylor Wimpey House purchase discount scheme, pension (including company contributions), quality health cover, share save schemes as well as many flexible benefits such as buying additional holiday days, retails discounts, free Bupa health assessments and so much more.  Our benefits work perfectly with our culture where you feel valued as a member of a successful team. 

We offer industry leading subsidised professional training and development, which support our employees to excel and fulfil their career and personal goals in a variety of opportunities and environments. This in turn drives a strong succession of high performing customer centric leaders, really putting customers at the heart of everything we do. We embrace diversity and look to develop our people in the skills and areas they are most interested in, leveraging the qualities and appreciate the unique competencies, skills and experiences that each person brings to the company.

The benefits we offer:

• Agile Working
• Healthcare
• House purchase discounts
• Competitive Pension
• Employee share ownership
• Time off for charity work