Engineer, Principal (Process Engineer)

About the role

The City of Richmond Department of Public Utilities is seeking two Principal Engineers—one for Water and one for Wastewater operations. This is an exciting time to join the City as we continue to enhance employee benefits and become the employer of choice.

Responsibilities

• Maintains compliance with water and wastewater permit requirements through regular monitoring and reporting.
• Develops and implements strategies to optimize plant processes, including setting targets and measuring performance against goals.
• Manages and reviews internal process sampling plans and monitoring programs to ensure efficient plant operations.
• Supports the development of the Capital Improvement Plan to ensure timely upgrades and renewal of equipment.
• Reviews and provides technical comments on engineering project specifications, designs, and timelines.
• Participates in project advisory committees to support design and construction of infrastructure projects.
• Manages contracts for external vendors to support plant process operations.
• Leads and manages internal operational databases to support data quality and respond to data requests from internal and external partners.
• Supervises the development of and reviews regulatory reports to ensure data quality and timely submission.
• Leads research and pilots in collaboration with internal and external partners.
• Develops and reviews standard operating procedures to support plant performance.
• Provides technical input into the development of annual budgets and process plans.
• Performs in-depth analysis to support optimization of liquids and solids processes.
• Ensures data quality and timely submission of chemical and energy use reports.
• Supports testing of alternative chemical products and development of specifications.
• Develops seasonal process plans to most efficiently use chemicals and energy while meeting process parameters most efficiently.
• Communicates regularly on process performance to internal stakeholders.
• Identifies and troubleshoots process upsets and implements corrective actions to avoid process upsets.
• Leads and manages instrumentation used for process monitoring.
• Leads strategy and manages instrumentation used for process monitoring.
• Leads research and pilots in collaboration with internal and external partners.
• Supports process infrastructure projects.

Qualifications, Special Certifications And Licenses

• Minimum Training and Experience: Bachelor's Degree in engineering, five years of professional engineering experience in water or wastewater treatment operations.
• Licenses, Certifications, and Other Special Requirements: Virginia Professional Engineering (PE) license or ability to obtain within one year of employment.

Skills

• Accountability and Dependability
• Interpersonal and Communication Skills
• Decision Making
• Initiative
• Safety Awareness
• Teamwork
• Technical Water/Wastewater Knowledge
• Business and Management Principles
• Microsoft (MS) Office Suite
• Database Management
• SCADA

Benefits

Virginia Retirement System (VRS), Language Incentive, Referral Bonus, and Tuition Assistance Program.