Southern California Water Treatment and Reuse Leader

About the role

The Southern California Water Treatment and Reuse Leader is a key role within HDR’s growing Southern California Water Business Group. This position will help to develop and implement strategies for increasing HDR’s share of the water treatment market in Southern California and supporting the reuse market growth across California and the U.S.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy and delivery for drinking water and potable reuse (IPR/DPR) pursuits and projects across SoCal; grow client accounts and win work.
• Guide advanced treatment process selection and design (UF/MF, RO/NF, UV/AOP, GAC/IX), pilots, and commissioning; troubleshoot operations and optimize performance.
• Build, mentor, and scale multidisciplinary teams; partner with technical directors on QA/QC and design excellence.
• Shape market presence through speaking, publishing, and committee leadership (AWWA, WateReuse, CWEA/WEF).
• Coordinate programmatic delivery (design-build/CMAR/progressive design-build), asset management, and digital enablement (SCADA, data analytics, digital twins).
• Support clients with funding strategy (WIFIA/SRF/grants), regulatory readiness (e.g., LCRR, PFAS compliance), and capital planning.

Requirements

• 10 years experience in water treatment design
• PE
• Proven industry leadership
• Team leadership experience
• CA experience is preferred but the right candidate can relocate for the role
• Seller-doer capability: client development, proposal leadership, and strategic positioning

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a Professional, Architecture, Engineering or closely related field
• Committed to quality, improvement and HDR values
• Maintains a professional or engineering registration and has related technical experience
• Experienced in development and management of diverse teams
• Works cooperatively with other area business class leaders, operations managers, technical directors and marketing managers on business class efforts

Skills

• Traditional and advanced water treatment expertise (UF/MF, RO/NF, UV/AOP, GAC/IX), pilots/commissioning, and process optimization

Benefits

• Leverage an expanding, diverse resume of nationally-recognized conventional and advanced treatment design projects, covering a wide range of facility capacities, treatment goals, delivery mechanisms and applications (e.g. surface water, potable reuse, impaired groundwater and desalination)
• Leverage cutting edge applied research, planning, and design work across critical areas of advanced treatment residuals management (liquid and solid streams); PFAS destruction technology; utility owned GAC reactivation
• Leverage our applied research group, the One Water Institute, which supports HDR thought leadership across all water sectors, through technical expertise, laboratories, and field-ready treatment, monitoring, and other analytical tools
• Leverage industry leading national PFAS and LCRR experts who help utilities navigate the new regulations with all their assessment, planning, implementation and maintenance needs
• Leverage industry-leading local Southern California experience on large conveyance design, including pipelines, pump stations and intakes
• Leverage Southern California-based and National strategic communication team well-versed in water treatment and reuse market drivers and initiatives
• Leverage California-based capital planning, funding, grant writing, and affordability expertise to help our clients access and prioritize the capital needs to advance their critical water programs adhering to Prop 218 requirements
• Leverage data-driven sector leadership focused on market drivers to keep HDR on top of market trends and drivers
• Leverage our breadth of in house traditional and cross-sector services to deliver integrated, implementable One Water solutions through holistic and programmatic approaches, providing best value to our clients

Pay

$163,000 - $243,000

Schedule

Full-time

Employee Status

Regular