Forensic Engineer (Electrical) — Career Move for Electrical Engineers

📍 UK & Ireland (hybrid / remote options available)   💷 £40,000–£90,000 DOE + 10% employer pension, private medical and employee shareholding

JustEng is recruiting Forensic Engineers (Electrical) for a long-established, employee-owned forensic investigation and expert witness consultancy with offices across the UK and Ireland and an international network spanning Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. The firm has investigated failures, fires and disputes for insurers, loss adjusters, solicitors and major corporates for over four decades, and its 150-plus specialists cover more than 70 technical fields.

This is a genuine career move for an electrical engineer, not a sideways step. The client actively recruits electrical engineers out of design, manufacturing, testing, contracting and utilities and trains them into forensic investigation and expert witness work. Full structured training is provided. What matters is the individual — the calibre of the mind, not the number of years on the CV.

Who this is for

The brief is deliberately broad. The client will consider outstanding graduates at the start of their careers through to senior and Associate Director-level engineers. Two people could sit at opposite ends of the £40,000–£90,000 band and both be exactly right. The band is wide because the seat is built around the person.

A strong academic record is a major requirement and is not negotiable. This is an evidence-based discipline in which your conclusions are tested by opposing experts and, occasionally, by a judge — the client hires for demonstrable analytical rigour.

About the sector

Forensic engineering and expert witness work is a technically rigorous, intellectually demanding field concerned with establishing why something failed — and proving it. Investigations follow fires, explosions, equipment failures, personal injury, product defects, regulatory non-compliance and construction disputes. The output is evidence: a report relied upon in an insurance claim, an adjudication, an arbitration or a court case.

For an electrical specialist, casework typically includes:

• Origin and cause investigation of fires with a suspected electrical cause
• Failures of switchgear, transformers, generators, motors, drives and HV/LV distribution equipment
• Installation and workmanship defects assessed against BS 7671 (IET Wiring Regulations) and related standards
• Battery and energy-storage failures — from portable lithium-ion devices through to industrial BESS installations
• Renewable generation losses — solar PV, wind, inverters and associated protection
• Control, instrumentation and SCADA system failures, in hardware and in software
• Performance of life-safety systems — fire detection, emergency lighting, intruder alarms
• Electric shock and electrocution personal injury claims
• Product liability and design-defect assessment, including work with Trading Standards
• Power quality, over-voltage, surge and lightning damage, and the business interruption that follows

What the role involves

• Attending incident scenes at short notice — securing, recording and recovering electrical evidence before it is lost
• Laboratory examination of recovered components: sectioning, microscopy, dismantling and comparative testing
• Reviewing design documentation, protection studies, commissioning records, maintenance regimes and O&M manuals
• Forming a defensible opinion on cause, and setting out the reasoning that supports it
• Producing a preliminary report — typically within three days of the site visit — followed by a full investigation report
• Writing CPR Part 35-compliant expert reports, contributing to joint statements and, in time, giving evidence
• Working alongside insurers, loss adjusters, solicitors, other technical experts and statutory bodies
• Taking part in the firm’s peer-review process — your work is checked, and you will check others’
• Advising clients on risk mitigation and loss prevention drawn from patterns across previous cases

Full training in forensic method, report writing and expert witness procedure is provided. Nobody is put in front of a court unprepared.

Why electrical engineers excel in forensic engineering

Electrical engineering transfers into this discipline unusually well, because the core skill — reasoning backwards from a symptom to a cause — is the job itself.

• Fault-finding is already your instinct: forensic investigation is diagnostic work with the stakes raised and the evidence degraded
• You understand what current does to materials — heating, arcing, tracking, insulation breakdown — which is the physical basis of most electrical fire investigations
• You can read protection and discrimination studies, and tell a genuine protection failure from a coordination that was never right to begin with
• BS 7671 and product-safety standards are already familiar territory, and compliance is frequently the pivot of a dispute
• Design, test and commissioning experience tells you what “correctly installed” looks like — and therefore what a defect looks like
• You are practised at structured technical writing, which is most of what a forensic engineer produces

About you

• A strong academic background is essential — a first-class or upper-second Master’s-level degree in electrical or electronic engineering, or a closely related engineering or physical science discipline, from a well-regarded university
• A second degree (PhD or EngD) is viewed very favourably but is not required
• Chartered Engineer status, or a clear intention to work towards it, is welcomed at experienced level; graduates will be supported through chartership
• Genuine technical grounding somewhere in electrical engineering — design, manufacturing, test, contracting, utilities, building services, power systems or product development all translate
• Excellent written English. Your reports are the product, and they will be scrutinised line by line
• A methodical, curious, evidence-led mind, and the honesty to report what the evidence shows rather than what the client hoped
• Willingness to travel to sites at short notice, and comfort with fieldwork that can be dirty, cold and physically awkward
• A full driving licence and the right to work in the UK or Ireland
• No prior forensic or expert witness experience is required — this is trained

What’s on offer

• £40,000–£90,000 basic depending on experience, from graduate entry through to senior and Associate Director level
• Travel allowance, and London weighting for London-based roles, on top of basic
• 10% of basic salary employer pension contribution
• Private medical insurance, permanent health insurance, life assurance and company sick pay
• 25 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, rising to 30 days with continued service
• Employee shareholding — the business is employee-owned, and every employee is entitled to become a shareholder, so growth benefits the people who created it
• Corporate bonus scheme
• All equipment for the role provided
• Hybrid and remote working options, with more predictable workloads than design consultancy
• Structured training in forensic investigation and expert witness practice, plus support towards chartership and further study

The long-term case for a move into forensic engineering

• Recession-resistant. Claims, failures and disputes do not stop when construction slows — they often increase
• Consistently short supply of credible electrical experts, against rising demand from lithium-ion, battery storage, solar and EV-related losses
• Globally portable. Forensic method and expert witness credibility travel; this employer has offices on four continents
• Strong long-term earnings. Established experts in this sector commonly reach six figures, and reputation compounds in a way it rarely does in design
• Your name goes on the report. In forensics you build a personal professional reputation, not just a project record
• Ownership, not just employment — the employee-ownership structure means long-term value accrues to staff rather than external investors

How to apply

To register your interest or arrange a confidential conversation, submit your CV here or contact JustEng directly. All approaches are handled in strict confidence.