Te kōwhiringa | The Opportunity

Downer is a significant player in the telecommunications industry within New Zealand. From cities to rural communities, from the Chatham Islands to Antarctica, our experts are delivering mobile and broadband coverage to keep communities connected.

We have had a fantastic opportunity become available as a Design Manager, reporting into the National Manager. It would be our preference for the successful candidate to be based in Auckland for this role, to continue building strong relationships both internally and externally.

The principal purpose of the Design Manager role is to provide effective leadership to a team of Designers ensuring that we have a highly motivated and productive workforce consistently delivering against our customer commitments.

Key activities are as follows:

• Allocation of design tasks to team and monitoring completion.
• Peer review or delegation of peer review tasks sign off estimated and quoted work.
• Developing client relationships and positively engaging to influence in a manner that achieves the right outcomes including by not limited to:
  • Spending time at Customer’s office in face-to-face meetings.
  • Escalation management.
  • Implementing performance improvement initiatives.
• Supervising the activities of Designers to achieve targets and provide quality service.
• Responsible for coaching & mentoring individual team members, performance reviews and performance management processes.
• Ensuring compliance with all company policy, standards, and procedures.
• Demonstrate Safety Leadership through Safety in Design and nurture and develop a Zero Harm culture.
• Support the National Manager in Financial Management and ensuring a profitable and highly utilised business unit.

Nga pūkenga matua | Important Skills

Maintaining strong relationships both internally with your team of Designers, plus externally with our customers will be vitally important in this role.

We need someone who thrives in leading approximately 10-15 Designers, with the ability to get the best out of the team, ensuring the allocated tasks are being met and at a high level. The successful candidate does not necessarily need to have the technical knowledge of Telecommunications network design, but experience in the design management process and leading build work is necessary.

Having strong customer relationship-building skills will be a key attribute of the successful candidate; listening, understanding, and resolving any issues/escalations to ensure the best outcome for both the customer and Downer.

What we will be looking for:

• Proven (5 years+) relevant experience in Design Management and leading programmes of build work including improvement initiatives.
• Engineering Degree preferred, and/or relevant vendor certification may substitute for the formal qualification.
• Proven people leadership with previous experience in developing people, encouraging participation, mentoring, sharing knowledge, performance management.
• Stakeholder management – internal and external (client) including escalation management.
• The ability to apply technical knowledge to the tendering, design and build processes.
• Experience in bid development and tendering.
• A sound understanding of the commercial & operational requirements of the tendering, design and project management processes.
• Commercial acumen.

Ko wai mātou | Our Organisation

Want to know more about what it is like to work at Downer? Then head to our People Site here! Or copy and paste the following link into your browser: people.downergroup.co.nz/join-our-utilities-team/

Me pēhea ki te tono | How to apply

If this sounds like the opportunity for you, click Apply Now to submit your application, including a Cover Letter talking to the why you would be the right fit for the role and team at Downer. The reference number for this role is 603170.

We are committed to a safe working environment for everyone - all successful applicants will be required to undertake a pre-employment drug test, medical and a Ministry of Justice check prior to starting employment. If you need support with this requirement, please talk to our team.