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Quality Engineer

Costain Group PLC Manchester, England, United Kingdom

onsitefull-time
Posted Feb 18, 2026

Role & seniority: Quality Engineer (mid-level) on a large highways project

Stack/tools: Quality management processes; inspection regimes; non-conformance (NCR) management; project specifications and standards compliance; documentation and reporting (MS Office)

Top 3 responsibilities

  1. Ensure effective performance of all quality activities per project specifications and standards

  2. Lead inspections, audits and non-conformance handling; maintain QA records and reporting

  3. Verify materials and workmanship meet contractual requirements and support continuous improvement

  • Must-have skills: strong QA/QC experience in construction, especially highways; ability to read drawings/specifications; proficiency in NCRs, root-cause analysis, and compliance auditing

  • Nice-to-haves: prior experience on large-scale highways schemes; familiarity with drainage, lighting, motorway technology, and related systems

  • Location & work type: Greater Manchester, UK; site-based on an active highway upgrade project; full-time/contract role as part of Costain’s delivery integration for NH work

Full Description

Costain has been appointed as Delivery Integration Partner by National Highways (NH) for delivery of the £240m improvement of the Simister Island M60/M62/M66 interchange (M60 Junction 18), north of Manchester. As Delivery Integration Partner, Costain will overhaul the busy junction involving complex traffic management to keep tens of thousands of vehicles moving whilst construction takes place.

The works consist of

  • A new free flow ‘northern loop’ link road to take drivers directly from M60 eastbound to M60 southbound without exiting the motorway
  • M66 mainline southbound widening and southbound slip road realignment to allow for construction of the northern loop
  • A widened connector road from M60 northbound to M60 westbound – replacing the current single lane with two lanes
  • Adding an extra lane in each direction on the M60 Junctions 17 to 18 (increasing from 4 to 5 lanes) while retaining the hard shoulders
  • Upgrades to drainage, lighting, motorway technology, signage and signalling.
  • New opportunity for a Quality Engineer to join a large scale Highways project in Greater Manchester. The role of Quality Engineer is to ensure the effective performance of all quality activities against the compliance requirements of project specifications and standards
  • #LI-JK1

Costain helps to improve people’s lives with integrated, leading edge, smart infrastructure solutions across the UK’s energy, water, transportation and defence markets. We help our clients improve their business performance by increasing capacity, improving customer service, safeguarding security, enhancing resilience, decarbonising and delivering increased efficiency. Our vision is to be the UK’s leading smart infrastructure solutions company. We will achieve this by focusing on blue chip clients whose major spending plans are underpinned by strategic national needs, regulatory commitments, legislation or essential performance requirements. We offer our clients leading edge solutions that are digitally optimised through the following five services which cover the whole lifecycle of their assets: future-shaping strategic consultancy; consultancy and advisory; digital technology solutions; asset optimisation and complex programme delivery. Our culture and values underpin everything we do.

Costain appreciate the time and effort taken when applying for one of our positions but, due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to provide individual feedback on candidates at application phase.

We do share individual feedback following an interview.

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that disclose they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people.

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Quality AssuranceComplianceProject SpecificationsStandards AdherenceCommunication SkillsOrganizationISO 9001:2015Internal AuditingHighways ConstructionMulti-site ConstructionMulti-discipline WorksEngineering Methodologiesmulti-location

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