Engineering Beyond London: Arup Is Hiring in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle

There is a persistent assumption that an LGBTQ+ professional who wants an inclusive employer has to move to London. Arup's current vacancy list is a decent argument against it. The engineering and built-environment firm has 170 live roles on myGwork, and the majority sit in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle and Bristol rather than the capital.

Connect Out — second in the country, and an award to match

Arup's LGBT+ network is called Connect Out, covering the UK, India, Middle East and Africa region. Its remit is to make sure LGBT+ issues are embedded in Arup's inclusion agenda rather than parked alongside it: it reviews company policy for LGBT+ inclusivity, runs awareness programming, and works with InterEngineering to push change across the wider engineering sector.

The external validation is unusually strong. Arup ranked second in Stonewall's UK Top 100 Employers — not in the top hundred, second — and Connect Out won Employee Resource Group of the Year at the 2023 British LGBT Awards. Arup's US business has held a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, including full marks in the 2026 index. In Australasia, where the firm runs a separate Pride and Allyship Working Group, it holds Bronze Tier status in the Australian Workplace Equality Index.

Kerryn Coker, Arup's Australasia Co-Chair, describes the trajectory rather than the trophy: each year, she says, "we've seen genuine action improve the inclusiveness of the firm."

Parental policies explicitly include LGBTQ+ families. Domestic and family violence policies have been rewritten to be inclusive. There is a board-level reverse mentoring programme, and a target to allocate a third of apprentice assessment places to Disability Confident applicants.

Owned by its own people

Arup has no external shareholders. The firm is held in trust for the benefit of its employees, who are called members and who share in profit. That structure is not a diversity policy, but it is why one exists in the form it does: a business that answers to its own staff rather than to a quarterly shareholder call has a different set of incentives when it decides what to fund and what to publish.

Where the jobs are

• Leeds — civil infrastructure, water and utilities design, energy and water infrastructure electrical engineering
• Manchester — senior electrical engineering
• Sheffield — structural engineering
• Newcastle — data centre engineering
• London — BIM technicians, façade structural engineers, fire engineers, physical security consultants, electricity networks and renewables, overhead line design for the Great Grid programme
• Early careers across 16 UK locations — Arup recruits over 160 graduates a year globally and around 70 apprentices annually, on permanent contracts with day-release study from Level 3 up to degree level, in cities including Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Nottingham, York and Whitehaven

Find your role

Visit Arup's partner profile on myGwork

Browse all Arup jobs on myGwork

Looking at other employers? browse our full guide to LGBTQ+ inclusive employers by industry and country, or read how Jabil and JLL approach inclusion.

Arup is a proud partner of myGwork, the Inclusive Talent Platform.