Lead Geotechnical Engineer

Join NUVIA UK as a Lead Geotechnical Engineer, where you will play a crucial role in defining, integrating, and assuring the geotechnical design basis for the STEP Prototype Plant. You will be responsible for ensuring foundation performance, ground stability, and soil-structure interaction for safety-classified and non-safety-classified structures. This position offers a hybrid work model and the opportunity to contribute to some of the UK's most innovative and strategically important programs in the nuclear, defense, and energy sectors.

Responsibilities

• Defining, integrating, and assuring the geotechnical design basis for the STEP Prototype Plant (SPP).
• Managing and mitigating ground-related hazards, such as liquefaction, settlement, and slope failure, across the plant lifecycle.
• Providing authoritative input to seismic hazard response, blast and extreme event assessments, and soil-structure interaction modeling.
• Define and maintain the geotechnical design basis and parameters, aligned with STEP safety functional requirements and classification.
• Assess and manage liquefaction, total and differential settlement, bearing capacity and slope stability risks for the SPP site.
• Develop and assure ground improvement strategies appropriate for large, heavily‑loaded, vibration‑ and seismic‑sensitive nuclear structures.
• Provide authoritative input to:
• Seismic hazard response and load transfer
• Blast and extreme event assessments

Soil–structure interaction modelling

• Integrate geotechnical data, models and assumptions into the STEP digital twin, supporting lifecycle change control and traceability.
• Support safety case authors by providing defensible geotechnical arguments, limits and claims.
• Interface with civil, structural, seismic, safety, CDM and construction teams to ensure design integration and buildability.
• Identify geotechnical risks to programme, safety or cost and support optioneering to reduce uncertainty at early design stages.