Engineering Manager

About the role

The Engineering Manager at Seven Seas Water Group leads the engineers who design the water treatment plants Seven Seas Water builds, owns, and operates. These plants primarily use seawater and brackish water reverse osmosis (SWRO/BWRO) systems to serve municipal and industrial customers in the U.S. and international markets.

Responsibilities

• Own the engineering schedule commitment on every project: ensure engineering deliverables are planned, sequenced, and completed to support on-time delivery of plants to the fleet.

• Plan engineering backward from the project schedule: sequence deliverables to ensure long-lead procurement packages release early, construction packages arrive before the field needs them, and engineering is never the critical-path surprise.

• Run the department on early warning: track deliverable status against plan, surface emerging risks, and come to the table with options.

• Support Project Managers in planning and delivering engineering scope; ensure all parties understand the requirements and are aligned on the plan.

• Ensure cross-disciplinary checks and communication among process, mechanical, and EI&C engineering, and coordinate with the 3D Plant Design group to integrate engineering and design.

• Facilitate HAZOPs and plant design reviews for new plants, ensuring they are early enough to influence design and not late enough to hold up procurement or construction.

• Support Business Development with engineering effort estimates and technical input on proposals, providing realistic capacity commitments for pursuit schedules.

Talent Development and Mentoring

• Mentor and develop each engineer on the team: set individual development plans, review work with a teaching mindset, and grow the technical bench strength of the department.

• Assess each engineer's strengths, gaps, and trajectory honestly, matching people to projects accordingly.

• Build a trusting environment where problems surface early without fear of blame, emphasizing problem-solving facilitation.

Resource and Demand Management

• Own the department's capacity plan: forecast engineering demand across active projects, proposals, and pursuits; maintain a rolling view of load vs. capacity by discipline.

• Manage inherently lumpy work demands without carrying dead headcount: develop and execute a flexible capacity strategy blending core in-house staff with outside resources.

• Structure outsourcing intelligently: lump-sum engineering subcontracts for well-defined, severable scopes and hourly/T&M contract engineers for staff augmentation during peaks.

• Build and maintain a qualified bench of engineering subcontractors and individual contractors before they are needed.

• Own in-source vs. outsource decisions for engineering scope, balancing cost, schedule, quality, and the development value of keeping work in-house.

• Manage assignment of engineers to projects in coordination with Project Managers; be the single point of accountability for who is working on what and why.

Quality Assurance and Engineering Standards

• Serve as the quality gate: all engineering work leaving the department — in-house or subcontracted — is checked, compliant with Seven Seas Water engineering standards, and of the quality required for plants SSW will operate for decades.

• Enforce a P&ID-centered engineering culture: the P&ID as the integrating document across process, mechanical, and EI&C disciplines, with disciplined scope boundaries, tie points, and revision control.

• Hold subcontracted engineering to the same standard as in-house work; review and approve contractor deliverables and hold vendors accountable for corrective action when work is deficient.

• Ensure disciplined drawing and document control: single source of truth, managed revisions, and use of the document list and approval status as a real measure of progress.

• Communicate transparently up and down the organization on schedules, workload, performance, nonconformances, and department KPIs.

• Champion continual improvement of the department's standards, templates, tools, and processes.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline; Chemical or Mechanical Engineering preferred.
• Eight (8) to twelve (12) years of engineering experience in a project-execution / system-integration environment; water treatment strongly preferred, SWRO/BWRO experience highly preferred.
• A track record of delivering engineering scope on schedule in a project-driven environment.
• Five (5) or more years managing engineers, with a demonstrable record of developing people.
• Direct experience managing engineering subcontracts and contract labor: scoping and negotiating lump-sum engineering packages, managing hourly/T&M contractors, and holding outside firms to a quality standard.
• Technically credible reviewer: able to read, check, and approve P&IDs, PFDs, GAs, specifications, and calculations across process, mechanical, and EI&C disciplines.
• Assertive and decisive: able to enforce standards, make the tough calls on people and priorities, and be a voice of reason and authority.
• Strong communicator, orally and in writing, up and down the organization and with customers and vendors.
• Ability to work a hybrid schedule (multiple days per week in the Tampa office) and travel 10–20% domestically and internationally.

Preferred Qualifications

• PE license highly desired.
• PMP certification a plus.
• Spanish language ability strongly preferred; multilingual skills desired.
• Experience with ERP-driven project execution (IFS Cloud or similar) and modern engineering document management practices.