Principal GIS Consultant — GeoAI & Spatial Intelligence

About the role

A Little More About Your Role…
As a Principal Geospatial Consultant with WSP, you'll support multi-disciplinary projects within the Geospatial team as part of the Transformation & Digital Insights service line, with a particular focus on supporting complex infrastructure and land projects. Reporting to an Associate / Associate Director and collaborating with GIS, Geospatial, Data Science, Data Engineering, AI and Technical Specialist teams, you'll help the team grow both personally and technically to maintain top-tier client service.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop GeoAI solutions — including object detection, feature extraction, change detection, and predictive spatial modelling — using both Esri tools and open-source AI frameworks.
• Write production-grade Python toolboxes, automation scripts, and spatial data pipelines for ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, and SDE environments.
• Integrate deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch or TensorFlow) and ML libraries (such as scikit-learn or Hugging Face) into geospatial workflows to solve client-specific problems at scale.
• Lead technical delivery on GeoAI project workstreams across utilities network analysis, land ownership and registry data, and water / environmental constraint modelling.
• Collaborate with project managers and sector leads to scope, estimate, and quality-assure GIS and GeoAI deliverables.
• Provide technical assurance and peer review of GeoAI and GIS outputs to ensure quality, robustness, and compliance with agreed standards.
• Produce clear technical documentation and methodology reports, and present findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Mentor and support junior GIS analysts and developers, reviewing code and promoting best practices in spatial data science.
• Stay current with Esri platform releases, emerging GeoAI tools, and relevant academic or industry research, contributing to internal capability development.

Requirements

• Strong professional experience in GIS, with a clear focus on Python development and automation.
• Strong Python skills: ArcPy, ArcGIS API for Python, geopandas, shapely, rasterio, GDAL.
• Practical experience applying AI/ML to geospatial problems (e.g. object detection, image classification, feature extraction, or spatial prediction).
• Working knowledge of at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch or TensorFlow).
• Experience with ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, and File or SDE geodatabases.
• Ability to communicate technical outputs clearly to non-GIS audiences.
• Degree (BSc or MSc) in GIS, Geography, Computer Science, or a closely related discipline.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have a customer focused mindset to deliver exceptional outcomes for our clients.

Skills

• Strong technical skills in Esri platforms, scripting (preferably Python), FME, SQL, data management, and data science workflows.
• A proactive, resilient mindset and exceptional problem-solving abilities.

Benefits

Work-life balance
At WSP, we understand that work is just one aspect of your life. It’s important to make time for you, your family, friends, interests and your community. Our hybrid working policy offers the flexibility to work from home two days a week, while also providing opportunities to collaborate in our modern offices across the UK.

Pay

Commensurate with experience.

Schedule

Commensurate with experience.